When Does Donovan Get The Blame?
by mlmintampa on Feb 14, 2010 11:46 AM EST
in Basketball
14 comments
Florida's 76-64 loss Saturday night to Xavier means the Gators have one resume win, defeating Michigan State in November. Following that win, it felt like the basketball team was finally back. Billy Donovan again put the pieces together and we had a team.
Less than three months later, the Gators (17-8) are on the outside looking in again. The last time Florida missed the NCAA Tournament in three consecutive seasons was 1996-98, the last year of Lon Kruger and first two Donovan seasons. Should the Gators miss the tournament again, it will wipe out all the excitement created by the back-to-back championships. You'll see more empty seats at games and more recruiting classes filled out by 5-foot-8 guards and power forwards who don't have any power.
At some point, after blaming Erving Walker for poor shooting, Dan Werner for air balling 3-pointers and everyone for bad free throw shooting, you have to realize that maybe this just isn't a good team. You can ask someone to play hard and try, but their talent only goes so far. After that, the blame falls on the coaching.
I am not suggesting Billy Donovan should be fired or that I don't appreciate what he has done for UF. But these are his guys. This is the team he built after losing recruiting battles for guys like Patrick Patterson. He knew they might not have the most talent, but he's won with those guys before. (You forget that Joakim Noah was so bad as a freshman, he played only nine minutes a game.) The difference is he can't get to these guys. Something is lost in translation, which ultimately comes down to the coaching. It is easy to blame the players, but after three seasons of the same crap, Donovan now has to get the blame.
The argument that Donovan doesn't get the blame would be based in part on who he has lost in the last three seasons; Marreese Speights, Eloy Vargas, Jai Lucas, Nick Calathes, Adam Allen and Kenny Kadji would have made a pretty solid lineup. Kadji and Vargas was supposed to be the second coming of Horford and Noah. But Donovan coached past losing Jason Williams, Kwame Brown (who committed to UF before jumping to the NBA), Mike Miller, Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh.
And let's consider this; what would have happened if UF lost their two tournament games to UCLA? That means UF would have a National Runner-up and National Semifinalist, two banners they already had. After those near misses and missing the NCAAs to follow, does Donovan keep his gig? To be fair, it's not likely that Donovan would get fired. Especially when you consider the investment in Donovan and the pretty basketball practice complex. But it would make the seat under Donovan much warmer.
I don't think Donovan should be fired and it is nearly blasphemous to think that. I think he has earned something of a grace period after winning two championships and three Final Fours. This mess though is as much of his fault as it is of the players he picked to bring to Gainesville.
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Good Post.
after i get out of the Guard im going to school to be a Football coach and i volunteered as an assistant at my old highschool this past summer, and one of the biggest lessons i learned that i will always keep with me in my coaching career is “talent only goes so far”. i think we have the players to be a good team, something just nees to be done to really harness what they have to make it all mesh together. Somebodys gotta step up and take charge and these guys gotta believe in it. Maybe we need to change our offensive scheme or go back to more of a fast paced full court pressure D. I think fast paced is our pace, for emample last night when we went on that run in the second half Coach Donovan called a time out, for what reason i dont know. After that time out we looked very very sluggish and Xavier took over, the timeout turned it into a slower paced game and we played like crap. We have two of the fastest guards in the SEC and can make the three and be lights out when we want to. I think going back to a faster paced game will help us in the long run i think we play better in it.
by gatorempire127 on Feb 14, 2010 12:30 PM EST reply actions
Here's The Problem.
“Should the Gators miss the tournament again, it will wipe out all the excitement created by the back-to-back championships. You’ll see more empty seats at games and more recruiting classes filled out by 5-foot-8 guards and power forwards who don’t have any power.”
Actually, the thing is that Donovan was unable to capitalize on those championships and turn them into recruiting victories that solidified Florida as a basketball powerhouse to rival their football dominance. The fact is that he’s never been an elite recruiter and maybe that’s because he has too much intergrity to play that game or because he’s been burned by defections in the past, but whatever the reason: that’s a cardinal sin in college coaching. UF is a football school and anything short of legitimate, sustained championship contention in any other sport just won’t cut it with this fanbase. Maybe Donovan is a victim of his own success, unexpectedly putting together, molding and guiding perhaps the greatest team NCAA basketball has ever seen, but the truth is that his seat is warm and warming because he push it so high. I’m tired of watching obviously incomplete and/or fatally flawed teams compete, sometimes reaching above their level to give me false hopes only to come crashing down in the most pathetic manner, and I’m sure most other fans are as well. Billy’s window is closing and the saddest part is that I just don’t see how he’ll turn that around…
"A player who conjugates a verb in the first person singular cannot be part of the squad, he has to conjugate the verb in the first person plural. We. We want to conquer. We are going to conquer. Using the word 'I' when you're in a group makes things complicated." ~ Wanderley Luxemburgo, 1999
I'll repectfully disagree
You guys apparently forgot what Florida basketball was before Donovan. It wasn’t much.
And to say that Donovan is not an elite recuiter is ridiculous. How many McDonalds All- Americans has Donovan signed? How many did UF sign before Donovan? He lured Mike Miller from South Dakota. He lured Peeps Roberson from Saginaw, Michigan and Matt Walsh from Philly, David Lee from St. Louis, Corey Brewer from Tennessee….that doesn’t even include Noah from NYC, and Horford from the Dominican – all to a football school with very little, if any (at the time) basketball tradition. These are guys that were targeted by Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, UNC, etc. He brought in Matt Bonner from Connecticut. Not an elite recruiter? Donovan has actually been an all-world recruiter. His glaring weakness is in Xs and Os. Always has been. The ’04s were just so good that they were able to win regardless of scheme.
Our offense is ridiculous – we have no ball movement. We bring a big man to the top fo the key and he sets a pick for the ball handler. That’s it. That is the entire Gator basketball scheme. No swinging the ball around the perimter – not enough passing (sans Werner who will ONLY pass because his shot now looks like that of a 6 year old girl).
Donovan has earned himself 8 crappy years at UF. Brace yourselves, because we are not even halfway there and it doesn’t seem to be improving much. We need more muscle. Much more. Macklin is not great by any means, but he is at least big and strong. He can take up space and get some rebounds. Everyone else is a finesse player. We need some 2 more guys like Macklin and this team would be good enough to make the tourney and not be easy prey. Donovan needs to recruit some big guys, but preferably, no more big white guys. He should look again to the Carribbean or maybe even Africa.
Look how many Gators are currently playing in the NBA. Horford, Noah, Haslem, Lee, Williams, Brewer, Speights, Bonner, Miller….how many schools can field 2 teams of alumni? Donovan has been in a bit of a recruiting funk, but he gets good players – not sure if he can get everything out of them though. We’ve had an alarming number of transfers and a handful of guys like Speights – who just don’t seem interested in giving Donovan 100%. I am not really sure what the problem is, but Donovan, while he deserves our criticism right now, also deserves our patience and respect.
i agree with the recruiting part.
every recruit we get is graded in the 90’s by ESPN. We get very very good recruits with or without an elite recruiter. the problem is in the game/clock menagement, the offensive firepower and defensive agressiveness. Hands down.
We have 2 awesome recruits coming in next year and another Top 10 Watch List player coming in 2011.
by gatorempire127 on Feb 14, 2010 6:10 PM EST up reply actions
I dony even know X and O’s, I am not a basketball guy. I can watch it and enjoy it but dont ask me to disect the game. Its is clear we have talent, but this talent doesnt seem to mold. These teams have actually held leads over Cuse, UK late in the second half. So its clear they have the talent to keep up with these teams. I would say the Bench is a huge problem, and agree that the big men we have dont play big enough. Macklin, Parson, Tyus are all 6-8 and above!!!!!! They are all JR’s according to RIVALS.COM. Parsons seems be picking up his game a lot in the paint, so I can see him being a force next year. But Macklin and Tyus really need to be more agressive or some thing. So we have Big MEN the problem is getting them to play like it.
So blame it on the coach, but what is the alternative to Billy?
"When you argue correctly, you're never wrong."-Nick Naylor
*They are typos, get over it*
agree
problem is simply
1. retaining those he does recruit
2. recruiting the right pieces
he had the perfect ensemble in the 06-07 seasons, but never before or after
also, makes one wonder how good pelfrey, jones, and grant were (or was it them and not billy)
I may be in a rut, but at least I know where I'm going
Something changed after the 04s were recruited. Anthony Grant left. Since then he has been able to recruit but there is just something wrong. Why would Jai Lucas leave to go be a walk-on at Texas. Johnathan Mitchell basically just beat GeorgeTown today. I have respect for Billy Donovan and he can stay as long as he would like, but part of me wishes he had went to the Magic so we could have seen how good Anthony Grant would have been. Yes I’m assuming that we would have hired Anthony Grant.
by McCann and McWill on Feb 14, 2010 10:58 PM EST up reply actions
Really?
If you want to see how good Anthony Grant would have been – check out Alabama. He coaches there. You can also check out his last team – VCU. He did a fine job there, but his first year there was his best. The team got weaker in his 2nd and 3rd seasons. That usally indicates a weakness in recruiting.
Donovan needs to recruit a true center. I know it’s not an easy thing to do, but he’s a great recruiter and should be able to convince a 7 footer to come to Florida. I’m not sure we’ve had a true center since Schinzus. We have had some really good power forwards playing out of position like Haslem and Horford.
One of our prized recruits for next season is a big man – he’s 6’9" and supposedly playes strong. The other is a small forward, so he won’t help much in solving our main problem.
Billy D has also had some tough luck with injuries – Kadji was supposed to be a slam dunk. not so much.
Hopefully that SF cruit will fill the Dan Werner spot with some actual point tho.if not Ray Shipmans gotta step up and this cruits gotta be a good 6 or 7 off the bench behind Shipman for significant minutes
by gatorempire127 on Feb 15, 2010 1:01 AM EST up reply actions
The score was 64-76 not 54.
Please dont start the whole Billy topic. Its just rediculous.
"When you argue correctly, you're never wrong."-Nick Naylor
*They are typos, get over it*
This is why I think Donovan is culpable for many, if not all, the current UF ills. At the end of the Xavier & USC games, Billy took Macklin out and replaced him with Werner, who everyone with a TV now knows is having a problem with his shot. The other teams promptly form layup lines. What’s worse, whebn UF stops play with a Werner foul, Billy doesn’t rectify the obvious need for size. I don’t know what’s going on with Donovan that would cause him to leave a frontcourt of Werner, Tyus and Chandler in the game, but it’s sad to see.
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