‘Backs against the wall’: Billy Donovan praises Gators’ championship grit

The Florida Gators are coming off the program’s third Men’s Basketball National Championship in program history this past season under head coach Todd Golden. Florida finished the season with a 36-4 record, with Golden becoming the second coach in UF history to secure a National title. The first was Billy Donovan, who won back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007. Donovan knows what it takes to finish the season on top, and tuned in when he could for UF’s latest run while managing his own coaching duties with the Chicago Bulls.

The Florida Gators won some nailbiters in the NCAA Tournament and secured impressive wins. However, while watching last year’s team, Billy Donovan was most impressed with the grit shown to stack so many comeback wins on top of each other.

“I think it speaks to a lot when you have a group of guys that can overcome that kind of adversity,” Donovan said on Wednesday while on The Paul Finebaum Show. “Because any of those games could have gone either direction for them. So that was the thing for me that stood out that was so impressive.”

Billy Donovan was in Texas to see UF’s final tournament games

Billy Donovan was in San Antonio to watch Florida’s Final Four win over Auburn, as well as their thrilling comeback win in the Championship game against Houston. Donovan watched current Florida coach Todd Golden and his squad get backed into a corner multiple times, but continued to find ways to slip out of defeat’s grip.

“I think the one thing that really stood out to me, and I think you realize this when you go through the NCAA Tournament, especially if you’re able to make a deep run, you’re inevitably going to come up to a game or a situation or maybe two games where the game could really go either way,” Donovan said. “You’ve got to kind of make some plays coming down the stretch to survive. I think the thing that was so impressive, in my opinion, about Todd Golden’s run and the team’s run was their back was against the wall several games in that tournament, and really almost dead in the water.”

Billy Donovan also praised the culture and mindset that Golden has brought to the Orange and Blue since taking over.

“I think it speaks to the competitive character of those kids that they found ways on multiple occasions to come from behind and find a way to win the game by making really, really big plays.”

Donovan reminisces about his past Florida teams

Billy Donovan took over the Florida Gators in 1996. He suffered two losing seasons at the start of his career in Gainesville, but worked hard to try and build a competitive roster. Florida started a run of NCAA Tournament runs in year three under Donovan, which ultimately led to a pair of National Championships a decade after Donovan’s first season. It took a few years to build the Gators up when Billy Donovan took over, and it started with the addition of key pieces recruited by him and his staff.

“One of the first guys we signed was Udonis Haslem. That was a huge key recruit, and Brent Wright were both from Miami High. Teddy Dupay was a McDonald’s All-American from South Florida. We were fortunate enough to go out and get Mike Miller from South Dakota, and that kind of really jump-started the program, so to speak, and got us on our way. Those early recruiting classes really helped us. We were able to follow up with Brett Nelson and Matt Bonner, some of those kinds of guys. It certainly was a big job. The league was very good back then. We were kind of starting from square one. I had really good assistants, a good athletic director, and certainly some players took a chance on myself and the program, and we were able to turn things.”