O'Sullivan Calls on Donovan to Challenge Gators
Thursday, May 31, 2018 | Baseball, Scott Carter
Former UF head coach Billy Donovan made a visit to campus on Wednesday to give the struggling UF baseball team a pep talk.
Billy Donovan answered. On his birthday, no less.
With his team mired in a slump heading into the NCAA Tournament, O'Sullivan dialed up his former UF coaching colleague for some help. Eleven years ago on the way to the second of back-to-back national championships, Donovan's Gators hit a speed bump when they lost three of their final five regular-season games.
They regrouped to go 9-0 in the postseason, including wins over UCLA and Ohio State in the Final Four. Spending some down time at his beach home following his third season as head coach of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, Donovan made the trip to campus on Wednesday afternoon to speak to the Gators as they enter the NCAA Tournament with six losses in their last seven games.
Donovan, who turned 53 on Wednesday, got the Gators' attention.
"I thought it was really effective,'' O'Sullivan said. "He did a good job. I thought there were a lot of similarities between both teams. I just decided to reach out to Billy and obviously he was in town and it worked out."
The reigning national champions open their bid to repeat on Friday against Columbia in the Gainesville Regional.
Donovan has been gone from UF long enough that few of the players on the team were here when he finished his final season in charge of the Gators in the spring of 2015. Florida ace Brady Singer, who had never heard Donovan speak to a team, said Billy D delivered the heat.
"He was awesome. He talked about adversity. We haven't faced adversity really much all year,'' Singer said. "We have the past two weeks. He said … 'you can either come down and face that adversity, or you can shut down.' I didn't know he was kind of the loud, fiery guy that he is. It was really incredible. I really think he helped out the team."
Donovan kept a low profile during his visit but told the Gators he is a fan and keeps track of how they do.
That impressed Jonathan India, the SEC Player of the Year. So did Donovan's message of rising above the adversity and fulfilling their potential as a team.
"He was disappointed in us,'' India said. "He didn't really want to motivate us. He came in and told us he was just going to talk to us and tell us what he saw as an outsider. It really helped us. It made us realize how we played [recently] and that's not how we play as a team. We are going to fight through that adversity and show everybody who we are."
