In a move quite similar to Tom Izzo recently, Billy Donovan played the “you don’t deserve to wear the ___ uniform” card on his squad. That’s right, after Florida lost to Bama in the opening round of the SEC tournament last week (perhaps a result guided by fate?), the Gators became essentially eliminated from tourney consideration. This display coming off back-to-back national championships for Florida. Needless to say, Count Donovan was not to happy with his team. As a result, he kicked his players out of their practice facility.
That wasn’t all — Donovan also prevented his players from wearing Gator gear, feeling they didn’t deserve to. The move was apparently similar to what Urban Meyer did with the football team in 2005 when he prevented those players from wearing Gator garb. While I’m not in the Gators locker room (and apparently, neither are the players), I can’t completely speak about what’s going on. But I do think players can begin to feel a sense of entitlement upon enrolling in a certain school. If you think about it, it wasn’t really these guys who earned the back-to-back national titles. Nice of Donovan to remind them of this fact when some athletes might have taken their greatness for granted.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 and is filed under College Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This is the latest sign of an obvious player revolt in the Donovan camp. Donovan shouldn’t be allowed to wear anything that says University of Florida on it for his actions last offseason. He took a job with the orlando Magic, then figured it out (much sooner than his college predicessors: see mike motgomery, rick pitino, tim floyd), that he wouldn’t be able to rule with absolute authority and intimidation as he would in florida. So he came back, and experienced his players losing respect for a man they once had respect for, someone who they didn’t think would play with them like he did. He signed an extention at florida, then left, and then walked back in like it was no big deal. His players didn’t play with the heart and enthusiasm they once had because thier coach showed them that the school they played at, the “pride’ and “tradition” and the intangables of playing college basketball didn’t matter. Donovan showed them its ok to be selfish and take money over integrity and heart. Donovan realized he made a mistake and what he was showing the kids was wrong, but the damage was already done. it should be donovan who stripping himself of the florida threads, not his players.
Ya know, I’ve always thought Billy Donovan was a POS…and people argued that with me. Anyway, he’s a real POS.