Billy Donovan

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William John "Billy" Donovan (born May 30 1965 in Rockville Centre, New York, United States) is a basketball coach who has taken the University of Florida men's team to 2 NCAA Final Fours in 2000 and 2006, the 2000 national championship game, and the 2006 NCAA championship with a 73-57 win over UCLA. He is one of only six men to reach the Final Four as both a player and a head coach; he's one of only three (Dean Smith and Bob Knight being the others) to play in the Final Four and win the national championship as a coach. He is the only active male coach in this club, joined by current Baylor women's coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson.

A native of Rockville Centre, New York, and the son of the third leading scorer in Boston College men's basketball history, Donovan graduated from St. Agnes High School in 1983 before going on to Providence College, where he played guard on the basketball team. His first two seasons with the Friars were unimpressive; he produced an average of 2 points per game as a freshman and three points as a sophomore. His junior year, however, the team received a new head coach in the form of Rick Pitino, and Donovan flourished in Pitino's system. "Billy the Kid", as Providence fans soon nicknamed him (after the 19th century outlaw), averaged 15.1 points as a junior and 20.6 as a senior, when he took the Friars to the Final Four and earned the title of Southeast Regional MVP.

After an unsuccessful year playing for Pitino on the New York Knicks, Donovan worked for a Wall Street investment firm before joining Pitino as an assistant coach at the University of Kentucky in 1989. His success there secured him the head coaching job at Marshall University. In two years at Marshall, he accumulated a 35-20 record and a league championship with a team that had gone 9-18 the season before his arrival.

In 1996 Donovan took over head coaching duties at Florida, whose men's basketball team had fallen startingly far from its 1994 Final Four appearance. Donovan took the team to the National Invitation Tournament in his second season, 1997-1998. The following season saw the team accumulate a school-record 22 regular season wins, make its third ever Sweet Sixteen appearance and become only the second squad in school history to appear in the final Top 25 polls (17th in the ESPN/USA Today Poll and 23rd in the Associated Press Poll).

The next season, 1999-2000, saw Donovan lead the Gators to their second Final Four appearance, defeating North Carolina in the national semi-finals before falling to Michigan State in the championship game.

The team has reached the NCAA Tournament in every season since its championship game appearance, currently making a streak of six straight appearances; in eight decades of Florida men's basketball prior to Donovan's arrival, the school had never reached the Tournament more than three years running. On 3 February 2003 the team achieved a No. 1 ranking in the ESPN/USA Today poll for the first time in school history, returning there the following season on 8 December 2003.

In the 2005-2006 season, Donovan's young Gator squad posted the school's best-ever win streak to start a single season, reeling off 17 straight victories and reaching #2 in the nation. However, the team failed to reach the top spot as it lost its first game of the season to Tennessee. This loss was followed by a surpising season sweep at the hands of eventual 2006 National Invitational Tournament Champion South Carolina Gamecocks. However, Florida avenged those losses by ending South Carolina's surprising SEC Tournament run in the finals and thereby winning the SEC Championship. This season ended as the most successful in the history of both Donovan and Florida basketball, as the Gators defeated UCLA 73-57 in the NCAA championship game, winning the school's first NCAA title. At age 40, Donovan became the third-youngest coach in history to win the national championship, behind Bob Knight, who led Indiana University to the 1976 championship at the age of 35, and Jim Valvano, who led North Carolina State University to the 1983 championship at the age of 37.

External links

[Billy Donovan's website at the University of Florida athletics site]

Current Head Men's Basketball Coaches of the Southeastern Conference

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