Billy Donovan
William John Donovan, Jr. (born May 30, 1965) is an American college basketball coach and a former college and professional basketball player. Donovan is the head coach of the Florida Gators men's basketball team of the University of Florida. He is best known for leading the Florida Gators to two consecutive National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championships.
Donovan has coached the Gators in three NCAA championship game appearances in 2000, 2006 and 2007. The Gators lost to the Michigan State Spartans in the 2000 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball final. The Gators won the national championship in 2006 with a 73–57 win over UCLA and again in 2007 with an 84–75 win over the Ohio State Buckeyes, making Donovan the first coach since Mike Krzyzewski to win back-to-back NCAA titles. He is one of only four men (Dean Smith, Joe B. Hall and Bobby Knight being the others) to appear in the NCAA Final Four as a player and win the NCAA national championship as a coach.
After a brief stint as head coach of the Orlando Magic that lasted only five days, Donovan re-signed with the Gators on June 7, 2007. The deal made him the highest-paid head coach in college basketball at $3.5 million per year.
Read more about Billy Donovan: Playing Career, Coaching Career, Awards, Personal Life, Philanthropy, Head Coaching Record
Famous quotes containing the words billy and/or donovan:
““Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?”
“I’ve been to seek a wife,
She’s the joy of my life,
She’s a young thing, and cannot leave her mother.””
—Unknown. Billy Boy (l. 1–5)
“The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organised visual lying.”
—Terence Donovan (b. 1936)