Saturday, April 01, 2000
Florida bears Pitino influence
Running, press hallmarks of Billyball
BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
INDIANAPOLIS — He does not look like Rick Pitino. He does not dress like Rick Pitino. He does not talk like Rick Pitino. He does not coach like Rick Pitino. Well, all right, so maybe Billy Donovan is guilty of that last charge.
His Florida Gators have borrowed plenty of what made Kentucky basketball special during Pitino's reign. They press. They run. They win.
“I took a lot of things from him,” Donovan said. “I think the first thing that comes to mind was obviously his work ethic, his preparation. Away from basketball, probably his ability of being so successful and still having a tremendous ability to listen, to be innovative, to be a risk-taker.”
As he prepares for his first Final Four game as a head coach, which matches Florida (28-7) against North Carolina (22-13) at about 8 p.m. today at the RCA Dome, Donovan delivers this soliloquy in a clipped, staccato manner that is decidedly different from Pitino's patient, explanatory approach. When Pitino speaks at length, he nods his head as if to signal he wants to be sure you're on the same page with him. Donovan is turning the pages faster than you can read them.
Donovan does not emphasize style in his clothing the way Pitino does but is more interested in outfits that reveal how fit he keeps himself. He slicks back his hair more like Pat Riley or Steve Lavin.
What Donovan took from Pitino during his years playing for him at Providence and coaching under him at Kentucky is a style of play few coaches are secure enough to employ. But it's a style that can, in the right circumstances, deliver NCAA Tournament success.
But Donovan is not a Pitino clone.
A disciple, yes.
“I'd say outside of my mother and my father, he's probably the most influential person in my life,” Donovan said of Pitino. “I think he's someone that taught me that through hard work and a lot of confidence and dedication and preparation, you can accomplish just about anything.”
Where Donovan diverged from Pitino is in the creation of a basketball program in the strangest of places. Pitino's most significant college achievements came at Providence and Kentucky, two schools with serious basketball traditions.
Florida reached the Final Four in 1994 under Lon Kruger, but that was an oddity, accomplished with a modicum of talent and an abundance of team chemistry. Donovan has attracted four McDonald's All-Americans and top-five recruiting classes to Gainesville in the past two years, even though his first two teams, as the program was rebuilding, finished under .500.
“Only Donnell Harvey saw us have a 20-win season, because he didn't sign until last spring,” Florida assistant John Pelphrey said. “That takes guts.”
Three years ago, Donovan patroled the state of Florida and landed four key commitments before the July evaluation period, which allowed his staff to concentrate on 6-foot-8 forward Mike Miller of South Dakota. They saw every game he played that month. The days the coaches weren't on the road, Pelphrey joked, Miller was home sleeping.
For all that trouble, the Gators got themselves a guy who plays 28 minutes and takes 10 shots a game. And somebody whose brilliance led to the buzzer-beating layup that defeated Butler in this year's opening round of the tournament and permitted Florida to continue toward this Final Four berth.
This is how it is with the Gators. Everybody plays. Nobody plays a lot. It's a device to keep them fresher than the opposition and keep them playing at a peak effort level.
“It all stems back to if you want to win or not,” Miller said. “You could easily go somewhere as a McDonald's All-American where a basketball player wants to go out and succeed for himself. But if you're willing to win and buy into a system like Coach Donovan's, then winning is the most important thing.”
As it relates to this team, Donovan learned no more important lesson from Pitino's ex perience than the importance of approaching greatness at close range.
It wasn't until Pitino de-emphasized the 3-point attack, making it a complement to his offense rather than the focus, that the 1996 Kentucky team became reliable enough to win six consecutive tournament games. A year ago, just less than half of the Gators' shot attempts were 3-pointers. Now, they don't shoot even a third of the time from long range and eagerly pass the ball to Udonis Haslem and Harvey in the low post.
Pressure defense remains the most important element of Donovan's approach. By the time most teams arrive in March, they have misplaced their running games either for lack of energy or ability. It becomes entirely a half-court affair. The ability to play at a faster pace and force that upon opponents becomes an automatic advantage.
There may be no more agonizing method of coaching a basketball team, but it is the only way Donovan can embrace.
“That style of play is very, very difficult to coach, because you take the control away a little bit,” Donovan said. “I've got to teach these guys to make decisions in transition. There's more room for error. We're taking more chances.
“Obviously, the percentages tell you to just fall back, guard the basket. I compare it this way. You get teams that play great half-court defense — deny, deny, deny — they'll get beat back-door for a layup. Coaches live with that. In our system, were going to have to live with some gimmes. I will give up one or two or three of those baskets to create pace and tempo and fatigue.
“From a coaching standpoint, each and every day, I can't tell you how challenging it is, how much I want to pull back the reins and control every pass. If I do, I'm taking away from the system.”
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