Billy Donovan: The Next Coach K?

[DevilWolf]

This is completely without cause, it's completely a hunch, but I just have this feeling I'm going to open the newspaper one morning and read about the NCAA investigating Florida for major violations. Maybe it's a bias towards the SEC in general, but I just get that feeling with Donovan.

And there is no way Billy is using Kentucky to get paid at Florida. All he has to do to get paid at Florida is to walk into the AD's office and put two rings on his desk. Using other schools to get paid is something coaches who haven't really done anything have to resort to ... Cal, Huggins, Barnes, Self, etc.

[JasonEvans]

Folks asked about the Florida recruits--

Brewer was #25 in 2004. Horford was #47. Noah was #72, but I recall hearing a lot about him and I think he was more highly regarded than that. Taureen Green was ranked just outside the top 100. Florida's 2004 class was considered one of the 5-10 best classes in the land.

Senior backup F Chris Richard, who had one of the best games of his career last night, was the #43 recurit in the class of 2003. Ironically, the other big recruits for Florida in that class were F Mohamed Abukar (#46) and PG Ryan Appleby (#90). Lee Humphrey was in that class but was not even a top 100 recruit.

Florida's recruiting has been pretty spotty the past couple years though they are bringing in a very nice class this season to replace the kids who are leaving after winning 2 rings. The real stud is guard Nick Calathes, who is a Mickie Dee. They also bring in 6-8 F Alex Tyus, regarded as a top 40 recruit and F Chandler Parsons, a top 60ish kidna recruit. Obviously, they are still very much in the mix for Patrick Patterson too.

Florida will really need to reload after this season. Even with the strong recruiting class they bring in, they will likely be a bubble team at best next year.

-Jason "one reason I thik Donovan moves on is that he has a real rebuilding job ahead of him at Florida" Evans

[NYC Duke Fan]

Folks asked about the Florida recruits--

Brewer was #25 in 2004. Horford was #47. Noah was #72, but I recall hearing a lot about him and I think he was more highly regarded than that. Taureen Green was ranked just outside the top 100. Florida's 2004 class was considered one of the 5-10 best classes in the land.

Senior backup F Chris Richard, who had one of the best games of his career last night, was the #43 recurit in the class of 2003. Ironically, the other big recruits for Florida in that class were F Mohamed Abukar (#46) and PG Ryan Appleby (#90). Lee Humphrey was in that class but was not even a top 100 recruit.

Florida's recruiting has been pretty spotty the past couple years though they are bringing in a very nice class this season to replace the kids who are leaving after winning 2 rings. The real stud is guard Nick Calathes, who is a Mickie Dee. They also bring in 6-8 F Alex Tyus, regarded as a top 40 recruit and F Chandler Parsons, a top 60ish kidna recruit. Obviously, they are still very much in the mix for Patrick Patterson too.

Florida will really need to reload after this season. Even with the strong recruiting class they bring in, they will likely be a bubble team at best next year.

-Jason "one reason I thik Donovan moves on is that he has a real rebuilding job ahead of him at Florida" Evans

It seems that everyone is assuming that Noah, Horford and Brewer are all leaving early. Where is that assumption coming from? If Donovan decides to remain at Florida, all three might stay and try to make history. If they all stay, Florida would be a heavy favorite to three-peat.

Jason, you seem to be very basketball savy. I had asked a few questions in a
previous post that I did not know the answers to. If you could, would you try to answer them.

Thank you

[Atlanta Duke]

Feinstein has an article posted this afternoon that states Donovan is now the King of the Hill in college ball.

There has also been a change at the top of the coaching pecking order. The new king is Donovan, who won't be 42 until next month. He has succeeded Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and Louisville's Rick Pitino as the hot name in coaching. He has now matched Krzyzewski's back-to-back titles in 1991 and 1992 and overtaken Pitino, who won at Kentucky in 1996 and came up an overtime loss shy of repeating the next year...

Donovan sounded only a tad wistful when he talked about what it might be like to go for a three-peat but he knows he can rebuild after his current players leave, especially now that he is coaching's biggest star. Donovan is now a brand, much like Bob Knight and Dean Smith once were; the way Krzyzewski and Pitino have been more recently

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...news-col-blogs

As a bonus, Feinstein quotes Gary Williams kvetching about the three point shot:

"The shot's too close, always has been. I've always said if you're going to give someone three points it should be for making a dunk because you have to run your offense perfectly to get a dunk. It's much harder to do. Now, no one runs real offense. They just try to find a three-point shooter spotting up or screen for a three point shooter. When I grew up, that's not the way the game was supposed to be played."

The top coach in college ball may change, but in an ever changing world it is comforting to know Gary will always be around to complain that the real world does not work the way it would if this was Gary's World.

[dukelifer]

Or perhaps he will learn from the mistakes of his mentor and decide that the NBA is not for him.

Personally, I think he's way too young to coach in the NBA.

He is almost a year younger than Nate McMillan who was coaching in the NBA when he was 36- he is also the same age as Avery Johnson who is working his way up to be one of the best in the NBA. The big question is whether his not being in the NBA for any significant time is an issue. The guy can coach and I think relate to the NBA stars. I think he goes. Miami is the likely choice.

[Troublemaker]

And there is no way Billy is using Kentucky to get paid at Florida. All he has to do to get paid at Florida is to walk into the AD's office and put two rings on his desk. Using other schools to get paid is something coaches who haven't really done anything have to resort to ... Cal, Huggins, Barnes, Self, etc.

Florida is still a football school and there needs to be a perceived real threat for Donovan to leave for the salary numbers to substantially jump, especially since we're talking about making more money than Urban Meyer. Is Donovan going to get a substantial raise if he stays? Yep. Will that have something to do with the fact that UK is offering him a substantial raise and is one of the few destinations (like Duke, UNC, UCLA, etc) that could still be considered of a higher class than Florida (wrt basketball)? Yep.

[vango]

To me - to be in the league of K or Knight you're going to have to win titles with different teams. It's impressive to win back-to-back. But I think winning a N.C. a decade apart is more impressive. Even more so when your program has a collapse in between. And to look at the big picture - how many times has K been to the Final 4 and not won. That's a different class. I still think we had the better team in '86 and '99 and would have won a best of 4 or best of 3 series. Had our chance in '94 and I think were in not for those last couple of minutes we had another great chance for a NC in '04.

Donovan is in a unique catagory - but "as great?" - not to me.

[Spret42]

Whether Williams is whining, he is also entirely correct. This is pretty much the same argument that Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe has been making forever. He has said repeatedly the shot is too short, too easy and distorts the game. The guy has been covering basketball since Bill Russell was winning titles and I have been reading him since I was a kid. He has seen more hoops close up that I could imagine. If he says it is too close, I will take his word for it.

The 19' 9" three point shot is a joke. The fact the major college basketball uses a three point shot that is equal to high school should make you ask what the hell is going on here.

I am not saying you get rid of the three point shot. And I am not saying it should be the NBA distance. But it should be closer to the NBA line than the high school line. Move it back to 22' 6" and make it a hard shot that is a true risk reward. 20 feet is a mid-range jumpshot and should only be worth 2 points in the game of basketball.

[JasonEvans]

The Comparisons will be forthcoming. I have a few questions that I do not know the answeres to :

1- During Donovan's tenure has he had any one year players like Deng and Maggette ?

2- Has Duke lost any recruits to Florida outside of David Lee?

3- Has Florida lost any recruits to Duke...was Casey Sanders high on their list ?

4- Has Florida in recent years encountered the same transfer situations similar to Boetang, Boykin and Thompson ?

5- Has Florida had any top high school recruit like Livingston who committed to Florida and then decided to jump to the NBA ?

6- This is not a comparison question but were Green, Brewer and Horford top 50 high school seniors or did Donovan develop them ?

Thank You

1- Florida has been the victim of some really early departures. Donnell Harvey last after his freshman season in 2000. Mike Miller left after his soph season in 2000. Aside from that, they have done a pretty good job of keeping their kids around the program until they are upperclassmen. There is no question that Donovan did an amazing job of selling Brewer, Noah, and Horford to return this year.

2- It is hard to say who Duke wanted that Florida got. I've got to do a lot of this from memory so I may be wrong. Certainly there was David Lee. I feel like Duke was interested in Mike Miller too. Duke had some interest in Anthony Roberson, but we chose Sean Dockery instead. We also had some interest in Matt Bonner in 1999, but we never really moved that hard on him and ended up pushing hard for Boozer instead. Florida has not really recruited in our end of the pool all that much (they tend to go for kids in the middle of the top-100 while we go for the top of the class) so we don't butt heads with them the way we do with UNC, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, and the such.

3- I am not sure of the answer to this. Sorry.

4- Again, I am not sure. I just do not follow Florida close enough to know. There have been some highly regarded recruits who went to Florida but are not there now, so I guess thos kids transferred.

5- Florida suffered one of the most devistating "high school to NBA" decisions ever when they lost Kwame Brown to the NBA draft a few years back. Brown was adamant about going to Florida for a looong time but when he started to hear that he would be the #1 pick and that Michael Jordan himself wanted to draft him, Brown changed his mind. That was a tough one!

6- I previously posted about the recruiting ranking of the Florida players. Most of them were ranked between about #30 and #100-- meaning they were supposed to be good players but probably not quite as good as they turned out to be. Props to Donovan for seeing something some other folks missed in those kids and then developiong them into a great team.

-Jason "ok, that took a little while " Evans

[NYC Duke Fan]

Jason,
Thank you for answering. Appreciate it. I forgot about Kwame Brown. Was Donovan the coach then ?

[Troublemaker]

ESPN is reporting that Donovan will return to Fla (probably with a nice raise)

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2826756

[ikiru36]

To me - to be in the league of K or Knight you're going to have to win titles with different teams. It's impressive to win back-to-back. But I think winning a N.C. a decade apart is more impressive. Even more so when your program has a collapse in between. And to look at the big picture - how many times has K been to the Final 4 and not won. That's a different class. I still think we had the better team in '86 and '99 and would have won a best of 4 or best of 3 series. Had our chance in '94 and I think were in not for those last couple of minutes we had another great chance for a NC in '04.

Donovan is in a unique catagory - but "as great?" - not to me.

Meaning no disrespect to Donovan, there is, as of this moment, no way to place Donovan at Knight's, K's, Dean's level of stature. I agree that a coach absolutely needs to win at least two, four years apart or at two different schools. In all honesty, from all that I'm recalling anyways, I like Billy Donovan a lot and could imagine him as one of the legends some day.

The all-time greats, in general, have all (in no particular order):

1) started at a program which was (at the time of their hire) in decline/not very good, even if it had a past history of greatness;
2) had a pedigree, playing and/or assistant coaching with another legendary or near legendary coach;
3) had a respected record of graduating their players with few, if any, "bad seed" players or very minor scandals;
4) created a pattern of league (winning most championships) and national dominance (perennial Top 10) of over at least 10 years;
5) won multiple national championships with at least two completely different squads.

These criteria place Donovan on a relatively short list of current potential greats, but he'll unquestionably need to win at least one more N.C. with an entirely different group of kids (apparently, that could be as soon as next year!) before he can be considered (by me anyways) for "legendary" status, and (in terms of demonstrating staying power) probably one should require Final Four appearances at least 10 years apart.

My 2 cents, anyways.

Go Duke!!!!!!!!!! Go Devils!!!!!!!!!!!!! GTHCGTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!