Billy Donovan Media Luncheon Quotes
Monday, March 11, 2002 | Men's Basketball
On Udonis Haslem and Foul Trouble
"One of the things that we may even look at is even not starting him. That's a possibility that we'll throw out there. I mentioned last time maybe making some lineup changes. I think there are some things that we have to look at. Udonis is going to have to play and he's going to have to stay on the floor and he's going to have to do a good job of using his judgement based on the way the game is being officiated. I think that every team in the first round is probably in a situation where the officiating is a little bit different than what they've faced. I don't think that it's any different for us or Creighton. We're both probably going to have officials that we've never seen before throughout the course of our season and you've got to adjust to them on how they're calling the game. I think as a coach, you have to make sure that the officiating is consistent from start to finish. I don't want Udonis Haslem going into the game worried about officiating. He has got to worry about winning the game and going out there and playing to win. If he does get in foul trouble, it's something that we've had to deal with this year and we'll just deal with it. Right now we don't have any excuses going in there at all. We've got to go in and play."
On Taking Haslem out of the Starting Lineup
"I think that Udonis is a highly intelligent kid. He's a guy that can sit there and do it. I'm not saying that I'm leaning towards doing that, but that's something to throw out there. Maybe we do start him, if he picks up one foul we take him out of the game immediately and let him sit there and watch a little bit to let him see what's going on. There are some different things that we'll look at. My mindset right now, to be honest with you, is to start him just because he's a senior, it's his last go around for the NCAA Tournament, but I need to make a strong point to him about his intelligence level playing post defense, scoring from a low post, what rebounds he chases, things that he does- he's got to be very smart."
On Creighton
"They are a basketball team that I'm very impressed with on film. Carver for them was Missouri Valley Player of the Year. He's a guy that has a high skill level, a phenomenal three-point shooter, can score posting up, can score from the perimeter. He will be one of the better wing players that we've played against all year long. They are a physical team in the front court. They're a team that posts up, ducks in really hard. They mix up their defenses- they'll get up and down the floor, they'll push it, if they don't have it, they do a good job running a half-court offense. I also think they'll extend their pressure. I think they will try to press us on Friday. We're playing against a basketball team that I think will go up and down. I think there are some similarities between both teams as far as the way they want to play where both teams are going to push the ball, if they don't have it they're going to settle in and run some half-court offense."
On coming together as a Team
"We're a basketball team that I really believe, if we're not all playing together and guys are playing well, we are a average team. You look at the Mississippi State game, we didn't get much from Udonis, Matt or Brett Nelson in that basketball game, although I thought David and Bonell gave us good minutes from the forward and center spots. The only thing that I'm being critical of is the passion, the intensity and the fight. That's all I care about as far as a coach. It's only happened twice this year in my opinion. It happened at Ole Miss and it happened at Mississippi State, but the only thing that I can go off of is the last time our team performed and that's what I'm going off of."
On Team Leaders
"Probably me. I'm not getting through to some of these guys about the sense of urgency they need to play with. I think Udonis and Matt have really tried very, very hard. I don't think that they lack any effort in that area. They are trying to lead to best of their ability and both of those guys have been thrown into a role of leadership and it's the first time that they've had to do it and they need some help and some guidance from me. The only thing that I want out of our basketball team every time they step on the floor is to play with a tremendous amount of fight, passion and heart and try to play as well as they possibly can. I think if they do that, then I've got to feel pretty good about letting it all hang out and letting the chips fall where they may. I really don't think that our problems have been with the lack of execution or guys really making bad plays. There are times when things don't go our way in a game; they've got to find ways to fight. I think a great example was the Butler game. That was like pulling teeth for the 45 minutes that we played that day. If you get down by five against Butler with three minutes to go, it's like being down 20. Our guys kept fighting and battling. It was a similar situation against Mississippi State because it was a four-point game with about six minutes to go, and I didn't feel like we battled and fought the way our basketball team should have, or how I want them to as a coach. After the Ole Miss game, we came back and responded pretty well. I think that I am doing a disservice as a basketball coach, I feel from the media standpoint, I try to be very up-front and honest, I try to tell you exactly how I am feeling. I could have painted a very flowery picture last night on the conference by saying, 'Well, it's our fourth 20 win season, a share of the Eastern Division Championship, we won two SEC Championships,' we could have promoted all that stuff and how excited we are and everything else. I'm not in it just to be status quo. I'm in it to try to get our team to understand what it means to compete for a championship and to be the best they can be because they are going to have to do that when they leave the program in a competitive world. If they've got a sales job and these guys aren't making their sales, they may not have a job. So they've got to understand what it is to compete and battle with adversity. I think yesterday, people may have viewed me as upset or mad, but it was just me being totally, blatantly honest and up-front with our basketball team. I think that's the way I feel as a basketball coach. My focus certainly is to beat Creighton, but I'm not going in there saying, 'If we win one game, that's great.'" I'm going in there with the mentality of I want our basketball team to get to the Final Four and win a National Championship. I know in order to do that we have to win this first game. My mentality going into the SEC Tournament was trying to win the SEC Tournament Championship. I want them to strive beyond places they thought that maybe they could get to. I think by challenging them, it will bring out the best in them, and it's what I'm supposed to do as a coach."
On Florida's Backcourt
"I like our backcourt a lot. I like Justin Hamilton and Brett Nelson a lot. If people recall the year we played for a National Championship, at the end of February, I switched and took Teddy Dupay off the point and moved Justin Hamilton there. We played with Justin Hamilton there and Kenyan Weaks at the two guard spot. I think Justin Hamilton is a better player today and Brett Nelson is a better player today, certainly there were some other recruitings that went around those guys. I think that those guys are two really good backcourt players, they certainly played very well against Auburn. I think Justin's lack of scoring against Mississippi State was a product of him trying to set up and make some plays. Udonis was in foul trouble, Brett Nelson was struggling and so was Matt, so Justin tried to become another person to provide some scoring. I think Justin has done a terrific job defensively, shutting people down, running our team. I think Brett has gotten a lot more in control and has made a lot better decisions and a lot better with his shot selection since the beginning and middle part of February."
The Importance of Guards
"I think you have to have good guards in this tournament. There's no question; guards have got to play well. I think guard play is always very important not only in the NCAA Tournament, but also throughout the course of the season. I think part of the reason we were able to get to the Sweet Sixteen that first year was because I felt like Eddie Shannon developed into a great leader and a very good point guard for us."
On Illinois' Homecourt Advantage
"If we're fortunate enough to get by the first game, and we've got to play Illinois in Chicago, then for them it's going to be a home game. That's the way it goes. My senior year in college before they went to this different format you were allowed to play on teams homecourt. We had to play UAB on their homecourt in Birmingham, Alabama. We were able to go in there and get a win and that was on the court that they played every single game on. Certainly there are games every year that Illinois travels to Chicago to play in. If there's a match-up in the second round game against them, then the advantage goes to them because it will be like a homecourt for them."
On Teddy Dupay
"I would say without question that Teddy was a fighter. He was definitely a fighter out there. He was a guy that was going to find different ways to win games. I don't think there's any question about that. People want to draw comparisons or conclusions that we miss Kwame Brown and his frontcourt depth or we miss Teddy Dupay's shooting. If we're missing those things then I'm setting our team up for failure. Those guys aren't going to be there, so for me to constantly talk about them not being there and using that as an excuse, then what I'm telling them is that our team can't win because those guys aren't here. What I would like to see our team do is maybe adapt some of those guys' personalities with the way they were competitively at being fighters. Guys like Brent Wright and Major Parker weren't two prolific scorers, but Teddy provided some scoring for us in shooting, but I think we have those ingredients and we have to be able to fight."
On Previous NCAA Tournaments
"If you look at the last three years we've played in the NCAA Tournament, the year we played against Penn, I think we were down by 15 or 18 points in the first half and we didn't know what hit us. The next year, Butler obviously took us all the way to the wire. Last year Western Kentucky jumped on us right away and at one point, we're down by nine. Our guys understand that they have to play well in order to win."
On Players being Upset Having to Watch the SEC Tournament
"I think some guys were really bothered. I think a guy like Udonis Haslem, just looking at the expression on his face, was bothered. There's some other guys that I'm not sure if the message got through or didn't get through. I'll have a better feel once I go to practice today. There's no question for a guy like Udonis that it really hit home because he knows that it's an opportunity that passed by that he won't get to come back next year and try again. Maybe some of the younger guys are looking at it as they'll learn from it and give it a shot next year. I know Udonis was deeply bothered by looking at his body language and by his facial expressions."
On Getting the Team Together
"We've got to get a better message from our coaching staff standpoint to our basketball team and the captains have got to get a better message to our basketball team as far as the way they need to play. We need everybody as one. I've never been a big believer at the end of basketball games of placing blame on one player for a breakdown, a missed shot, a missed free throw or anything else. There's too many plays through out the course of the game that if everybody would've done something a little bit differently it could've affected the outcome of the game. I want our basketball team to understand that they need to work hard for success. I don't want them to think that just because they are in this program, it doesn't ensure success in the future. It requires a tremendous amount of discipline, hard work and toughness. That is the mentality that I am trying to get across to them. I want them to understand that we may not shoot the ball well on a particular night, or we may shoot well, that some nights we'll turn the ball over, we'll deal with foul trouble, but there's always things you can do to offset different circumstances throughout the course of the game."
"I look at it one game at a time right now. When you get to this point in the season, a lot of times momentum and the excitement of the NCAA Tournament gets you ready for the next game. I know the last three or four weeks of the season we've won one, we've lost one, we've won, we've lost. I also think we have to look at where we went and played. We went to Alabama, who was ranked fifth in the country, and played them on their home floor with a chance to win. We were up by one with 16 seconds to go in the game. At Kentucky, we're up by two and they're a top-10 team with 30 seconds to go. I would probably be feeling a little bit differently going into that situation if it was games where on the road, night in and night out, we're getting blown out. This team has not had very many bad, bad games. We've had two really bad games this year: Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Outside of that, there aren't too many games where I can say we played poorly. Maybe Georgia at home I don't think we played particularly well. Arkansas at Arkansas I thought we played really horribly because we missed a lot of free throws that hurt us. There's only been a couple games this year that we haven't played with that passion that I'm talking about. As a coach, I have to go by how my team performed the last time."
