As the game clock ticked off the final seconds Saturday night, the Florida Gators had a lead big enough on Tennessee to take an intentional shot-clock violation. Such circumstances have been rare for the Gators in this rocky-road of a season, but it was at that moment when the Rowdy Reptiles began serenading something even rarer.
A true college basketball treasure.
“BIL-LY D! BIL-LY D! BIL-LY D!”
In a normal year — the kind when their team is competing for Southeastern Conference championships and playing for high NCAA Tournament seeds — maybe the milestone moment would have meant something more to UF coach Billy Donovan. Yet his team’s 66-49 rout of the Volunteers felt pretty good for the packed O’Dome and provided a nice scene nonetheless for Donovan’s historic career victory No. 500.
“To be honored like that at the end of the game was extremely touching,” said Donovan, who at 49 became the second-youngest coach — behind only Bob Knight — to reach 500 Division-I wins, thus adding yet another line to powerful résumé already highlighted with back-to-back NCAA championships and six SEC titles. “I started when I was relatively young and still really enjoy doing this. I really do.”
He probably enjoyed this game as much as any this season. The Gators (14-15, 7-9) did a wire-to-wire number on the Vols (14-14, 6-10), thanks to a sizzling 69.6-percent shooting from the floor in the first half — including 7-for-11 from 3-point range — in racing to an 18-point lead at intermission and cruising home from there.
Junior forward Dorian Finney-Smith returned from a three-game suspension to post his second double-double in as many games (20 points, 10 rebounds), knocking down a season-high four shots from long range. Junior guard Eli Carter hit his first three 3-balls on his way to 11 points, plus six assists and three steals. Senior center Jon Horford also had 11 points.
"We wanted to get it done for him tonight," senior forward Jake Kurtz said. "He means so much to me, so much to all of us, and I’m grateful just to have been a part of this."
After keeping Donovan stuck on 499 for two straight eye-sore losses (at LSU last weekend, then Tuesday night at SEC cellar-dweller Missouri), the Gators weren’t about to leave him there in front of the home crowd. They played like it, too.
“We wanted to spray him down in there,” Finney-Smith said in reference to the water-bath locker room ritual. “But we’re 14-15.”
The Gators did not play like a 14-15 team on this night. With their best all-around player back in the lineup — and still holding out hope junior guard Michael Frazier II, who’s missed the last seven games with an ankle sprain, could return for one last gasp — this game felt very different than so many of those sloppy eye sores this season.
Fittingly, this was a "Billyball" game. Fast-paced, up-tempo, with lots of 3-pointers and a bunch of rim-rattling dunks, too.
“It’s a testament to Coach and his ability to bring people together and have them play the game of basketball at a high level,” said Horford, whose older brother Al was part of a nice chunk of those 500 wins in starring on those NCAA dream teams. “I’m sure he’ll continue to do great things and win a lot of games, but it just feels good to have been a part of it. I just hope we can finish out the year by giving him a few more.”
Florida opened by nailing its first two 3s. When Carter made the Gators 3-for-3 from distance their lead was 15-5 barely five minutes in.
“Those were shots we normally get, we just haven’t been making them. When you do, it’s a confidence-builder,” said Carter, who acknowledged the return of Finney-Smith’s in-and-out game gave his team more options in the halfcourt. “Doe-Doe is a consistent stretch-4 and can make that open 3-point shot. Just him being out there helps us a lot.”
Him being out there and making his first four from deep helped even more. Finney-Smith bombed two late in the first half, then a driving floater from Kasey Hill (7 points, 8 assists) with three seconds to go made the score 40-22 at the break.
Some context: With Finney-Smith suspended, Florida averaged just 55 points the previous three games. With him back, they were 15 shy of that after 20 minutes.
“I just wanted to come out and play with a lot of energy,” said Finney-Smith, who was suspended for violating team rules. “I felt I owed it to these guys to have a good game.”
In the bigger picture, those guys felt they owed it to their coach to deliver this moment in this setting. The Gators took the lead out to 23 points in the second half, watched the Vols go on a mini-run that took it down to 15, but squashed any hope of a crazy comeback by making more shots.
"That wasn’t going to happen," Kurtz said when asked about UF’s several second-half crumbles earlier this season. "Not tonight."
The chants and the ovations were evidence of that.
“This may sound kind of strange. … It wasn’t really a relief for me at all," said Donovan, now 500-204 for an all-time winning percentage of .710, of hitting the big number. "I really mean this; today was great for me personally. But I was much, much more pleased and happier with the way our team played than anything else. My wife never said anything to me about it. The only thing she said to me is she’s the only one that’s been around for all of them."
Jeremy & Billy UF athletic director Jeremy Foley hired Donovan on March 27, 1996, by way of two seasons (and 35 wins) at Marshall. He was 29 at the time. The move was considered a game.
And 465 wins later?
"People see the national championships, the coach-of-the-year awards, the final fours, a 30-game winning streaks, but I don’t know if they really understand how hard the guy works," Foley said after presenting his coach the game ball the winning locker room. "In those 500 wins is a lot of blood, sweat and tears. It just reaffirms what we thought. He’s he’s one of the best, and an incredible ambassador not only for this program, but for this university and this state."
Up until Saturday, this season looked far more like some of those rebuilding seasons when Donovan first arrived. And that made what the Gators did on the court even more impressive. They won one for their coach who had won so many for Gators everywhere.
Five hundred before his 50th birthday. Think about that. Better yet, think of the ones who didn’t do it. Wooden, Krzyzewski, Self, Smith, Boeheim, Calipari, Rupp, Pitino, Williams — even Wooden.
“When you get into this, you never know how long you’re going to be doing it,” Donovan said.
Horford had a prediction. “I say he gets to 1,000,” he said.
That would be the dream for Florida fans everywhere. But for “Billy the [Older] Kid," for the moment, just a deep breath might be in order.
“I don’t know if I could even get to 501, right now.”
Bet he gets there.
Stay with HoopDirt for the latest college basketball coaching news and rumors.
