Billy Donovan Quotations

One of the biggest things to stop is momentum. There are always teams that can get on a roll. Some people say that if you have won 15 games in a row, it's good to take a loss into the (NCAA) tournament. Other people say that if you lose a game, your confidence level is lower, that you are not going into the tournament playing your best. I always say that just because you lose, you can still play well. You can get beat by a better team.

I would do whatever I could to help Major Parker. I'd recommend him for another job to anyone. We have all made mistakes in our lives.

I was shocked and happy that we were tied.

I was really so proud of the way they fought their way back to tie the game up. . . . But there is a huge difference between Tennessee and ourselves.

I wouldn't classify our team with the way we play defense as a shot-blocking team. I think one of the things you always leave yourself vulnerable to, any time you have big people leaving the floor, is offensive rebounding and foul trouble.

I wouldn't say we're a loose team as much as we're a confident team.

When I looked at it, I thought it was pretty serious. That's something that we'll have to be careful with. We have an off-day (Sunday) and then we'll re-evaluate it.

No one likes losing, but it's great for our basketball team to go through this. It is great because they need this. I really believe the difference was our experience as a basketball team in relation to their experience.

Maybe the crowd has something to do with it. I don't know what the reason would be. There are some teams, they feel more pressure at home and they play looser on the road. There are some teams that feel a lot more confident at home and they aren't as confident on the road. What gets into it, creeps into the mindset, I'm not really sure. I wish I had the answer.

Maybe it was defective spokes, maybe he needs training wheels, I don't know.

Maybe it was defective spokes, maybe he needs training wheels, I don't know. I just know he slipped off his bike. ... It was a freak thing that I feel bad about for Lee, but we've got to try to get him back as soon as we can.

Obviously as a freshman, without question he was not only one of the best freshmen in the league, but was one of the better players in the league. He's got great size. He can shoot over top of people. He makes every difficult shots.

Obviously, something upset him. Whether it was staged or something -- he seemed genuinely upset about it -- I don't know. He's as fired up and enthusiastic as any player out there.

I have confidence putting Walter and David in the game. I'm not going to not play those guys. They deserve an opportunity to play. They may not always play well, but they're going to play hard.

I got on them because our thought process going into the game was go inside first and then come back out. We were letting the ball sometimes go on the perimeter with the ball never touching the paint, and I think South Alabama wanted us to do that early in the game.

I'd like to start Moss, unless he says he doesn't want to start.

I didn't want to give Tennessee a chance to set their defense. Lee got a great look. It just didn't go down.

I don't know about him for next game. It's inside his lip. He's probably going to have to get it stitched up.

I don't feel that our program at all is ever an afterthought. I think we have the best of both worlds.

I don't get into the numbers because you still have to go win that game. There's not much difference in a 1 or a 2 or in a 3 and a 4. Beyond that anything can happen. That's why it's called March Madness.

I don't know where he's at. Everything went well in terms of the procedure. A lot will depend on how he heals the next couple of days.

I don't know there's a clear-cut favorite right now. If you're going to look at what's happened, LSU has been the most impressive in our league. You're dealing with depth issues for everybody, you're going to be dealing with fatigue issues, you're going to have to deal with foul trouble, you're going to have to deal with playing three teams in a row and you have to deal and move from one day to the next.

I don't know what the official said. I actually thought it may have grazed the rim, but I didn't have the best view of the play. Mike is a fiery guy. He's a tough competitor.

Lee fell off his bicycle, that was pretty much it. That's all it really is, no car accident or anything like that. It was a freak thing that I feel bad about for Lee, but we've got to try to get him back as soon as we can.

Lee gets a lot of credit for his perimeter shooting. Forget about the shooting part of it, we've just lost maybe our best overall defender. Lee is our most consistent, most disciplined, best defender.

Lee is one of those guys who understands scouting reports, schemes and how we are guarding. You can be rest assured that he is going to follow everything to the minute detail of what he has to do. So, forget about the shooting part of it, we have just lost maybe our best overall defender.

Lee might be one of the best shooters I've coached, but what he doesn't get enough credit for is his ability to defend on his perimeter. He's probably our most consistent defender in terms of keeping guys in front of him and challenging shots.

When you can start something from scratch and build it up to win a championship, that's something special.

Maybe we can get him a rocking chair or something.

I have never had a player go from a 10-minute-a-game guy one year to being a team leader on the floor. It's pretty unusual, but so is he.

Kevin does a good job moving him around and creating shots. He's got a very good feel and he's a good, hard cutter.

I would say that our basketball team is totally different.

I would say that our basketball team is totally different. Every guy on our team is playing a completely different role than they did a year ago.

I would say it's gone the other way with him. I'm not anticipating him back Saturday and I'm not anticipating Corey back at 100 percent right away. We're probably going to have to keep going through this for at least the next couple of games.

He is the whole key to their team. When he gets his 18 to 19 points, everything else seems to fall into place.

He just felt like where he was at physically it was best for Walter to start. I think that takes a kid with unbelievable character, a kid that cares about the team, a kid who has started every single game since he's been here walked into my office and said, 'Coach, Walter needs to start, I need to come off the bench.' . . . I don't know how many sophomores in college would come in and say that.

He just wanted to talk about the day each one of us had. What I did, what he did.

I can't live their lives for them. They could just as easily get hurt doing something on the court.

I can tell you that these kids have a great deal of love and concern and care for one another.

Get out there and make him a driver, let's see how many times he can finish going to the basket. We allowed him to do what he does well, and that's shoot the basketball.

I get great pleasure seeing our kids enjoy it, our administration enjoy it, our fans enjoy it. It's not about me.

I get great pleasure seeing our kids enjoy the game. It's not about me or how young I am. But it's about the people you coach all the time, and I get a lot of pleasure seeing our kids celebrate.

I got choked up. When 19 years passes by and you go back, to hear the people cheering the way they did and to honor me that way, I was extremely humbled. I was shocked, taken back, and I didn't expect anything like that.

Glen Davis is to college basketball and to this league what Shaquille O'Neal is to the NBA. There's nobody quite like him.

I don't think anybody beating anybody is going to be a surprise to any coach in this league because of the balance and the parity between the 12 teams in the league.

I don't think our guys are upset or bothered by it. That's something that's beyond their control. People can talk about the George Mason story and rightfully so. It's a great story that I think will inspire many people outside of college basketball.

For us, it was a game we had to grind it out. It wasn't always our style of play. ... Tonight was about consecutive stops and defending the 3-point line. They shot 19 percent from the 3-point line and 39 percent from the field. That was the difference.

I don't sleep, period. I really wish I would sleep. I haven't slept in months.

I don't think you can win without it. That's the biggest challenge we as coaches face every year.

I don't think we're any different than when we started the year.

If it were something where he was riding a motorcycle and he was popping some wheelies and he got hurt, than maybe I would be a bit more concerned. It was just a freak accident.

I believe there are three ligaments around the shoulder area where he got injured. Apparently if you tear more than one, you have to have surgery to get back the stability in the shoulder. He only tore a ligament, so he didn't need surgery and there were no fractures in there.

I believe they love being challenged, and that's unique. This is a different group of kids.

Certainly, I'd like to make a deep run in the tournament. But I'm at peace with this team.

Based on what do we deserve to win those games? Based on what? Three, four sophomores and a freshman? That doesn't give us a right.

I don't care how old you are, there's a level of humility that comes with that.

I felt bad for these kids. The past kept being brought back to them. They weren't part of it. They had nothing to do with Manhattan or Creighton.

I felt like our team learned a lot today. I think our guys understand a little bit more how hard you've got to compete, and I'm talking about physically. Our guys play with great emotion and energy, but there's also a physical side they've got to learn. They are an unfinished product, but they really try. We played aggressively, we got up and down the floor and we played our style.

I felt like this year's team would be great to coach, a fun team to coach. They would be a team that would play unselfishly, play together. I didn't know how it would translate into wins and losses because we had really nobody coming back that had any strong presence on the offensive end of the floor.

Chris has seen himself improve and get better. And I think that is a tribute to him really making some great strides as a person in terms of his work ethic, in terms of competing, in terms of understanding what we want as coaches.

Chris, really, to be honest with you, was a very, very difficult guy to coach in his first two years here. And he has really grown.

When he's letting it go and shooting with confidence like that, it makes us a different team. Some days, it might not be his night, but we need for him to continue to be aggressive.

He's a great coach. This was just a matter of time.

He runs, he catches and he alters shots. You just don't see a lot of players in college basketball like him.

We've got to go out and prove ourselves. I think it's very evident we're not a top-five or top-10 or top-15 team. We were given that. But we didn't necessarily deserve it.

I always felt I was going to have a lot of fun coaching these guys. They've had the right attitude, and winning has been the byproduct of it.

He was a great guy. It was such a tragedy, what happened. He touched a lot of lives. I know with St. Francis, he and (athletic director) Randy Maris had a lot of plans, he wanted to give Bud the chance to build a basketball program and unfortunately it didn't work out. At least his family, his kids, will have something they can hold to and remember him by.

He just needs to let it go. It's really that simple for our team.

He carried our team offensively, no question. The thing that was so shocking was he only took 14 shots. The thing that was so impressive was he got to the free-throw line 22 times.

He was teaching us that sometimes less is more. Less of myself was more that day.

He created and made some things happen. He made some very timely 3-point shots when they were trying to make a run.

He created and made some things happen. He made some very timely 3point shots when they were trying to make a run.

I am happy I can be a part of the first ever national championship.

I am happy I can be a part of the first-ever national championship. I am fortunate to coach an unbelievable group of guys. We appreciate your support and love and are happy to be part of a special university.

If that happened, I'd be really disappointed in our team. We're playing against a team that really out-performed us a couple of weeks ago in Columbia. The final score says 6 points, but we were down by 15 in the second half, we were dominated in the game. I would hope our guys would be excited about having the opportunity to compete again and play again.

If someone wants to say, 'What Florida has done to this point in time means absolutely nothing... the regular season doesn't mean anything... the Southeastern Conference tournament championship means nothing.' That's fine.

He was almost in tears because, for the first time in his life, he wasn't getting an opportunity to play. I told him, this is going to come to an end this season. And when it does, your time is here.

He has a great, great vigor for life.

He has a great passion and vigor for life. He has great respect for people - where they come from, what their heritage is and what their beliefs are.

He hasn't had big scoring nights. But he's also done other things.

Going into this game, we don't have any excuses. We have enough to get out on the floor and dress. We're not going to be playing five against four.

He's got great ability and great talent. But the best part of his game is he's a great competitor, has great enthusiasm and he plays to exhaustion.

He's always been a terrific runner. He has a great threshold to run through fatigue. He plays all the way. One hundred percent. Full throttle.

He's as good a shooter as anyone I've coached since I've been here. He can line up in shoot with anybody in the United States of America.

Hopefully, the success we have had this year and in the past is something that kids can look at and say, Florida is very competitive nationally and inside their league.

He made the game easier for the entire team. He really got everyone else involved. Some guys had some really big nights because of his dribble penetration.

He gets bothered at a lot of the attention, or (that) people want to talk to him because it is a unique story. It is a unique family. He worries about getting too much attention and taking away from the rest of the guys. ... He doesn't want that.

He doesn't want this. He wants to spread it around. He doesn't view himself as a celebrity.

He has the ability to take difficult shots one, to get them off and two, to be able to make them at a high percentage. He has a special gift and there is nothing you can do about it.

He needed to have a game like this. I was happy for him. The last week or so, I think he's been doing some soul searching, just trying to find a way to come up with some answers to help our team. He helped out big-time tonight.

He'll definitely travel. I'd say, right now, that he's not going to play.

He never has a bad day. He is an unbelievable kid. He has a great disposition. He's intelligent. And he's very, very enthusiastic.

He'll thank me four or five times walking off the floor. I don't expect to be thanked. That's the way he is.

He got back to playing the way he normally does.

He (Green) is so quick and so fast, he can get out and pressure the ball on defense, and he gets the ball and just goes, which makes everyone play at a different speed.

Jo has been great. Sometimes the margin for winning and losing is so fragile.

My personal feeling is right now our team will be back next year outside of Adrian Moss.

My personal opinion, after talking with these kids and their families, is they will be back next year.

My philosophy defensively is to try to take teams out of what they practice every single day.

I went off pretty good at halftime. It's hard if you're not making shots to get off to a good start. We could have very, very easily have been up 15 or 20 in the first half.