Opening statement
Donovan: We're playing, if not the best team, one of the best teams in the country. What makes them one of the best teams is they have a variety of different ways they can beat you. They can beat you in transition. They can beat you by making you turn it over. They can beat you by offensive rebounding which is what they did to Memphis. With (Chris) Lofton and JaJuan Smith they can beat you from behind the line.
A guy like Tyler Smith can beat you in a lot of ways. There's a lot for us to get prepared for playing these guys and they've had a terrific year and played very, very well. They played a lot of big games on the road so I don't think coming in here is anything unfamiliar to them with whom they've played and where they played this year.
What can you try to take away first with them?
Donovan: I don't know there's anything you can say, 'Listen, you can take this away.' There's no question last game Lofton and JaJuan Smith making six threes a piece, those guys making 12, that's obviously a concern. Their ability to offensive rebound is another concern. Getting back in transition is a concern. It's all a concern. I don't think you can look at one thing or two things. It's a multitude of things you have to do to put yourself in a position to win.
How good is Tyler Smith?
Donovan: I love him. I liken him to Chuck Hayes, who was at Kentucky. People look at the points and the rebounds. Chuck Hayes was as good as any player I've seen since I've been here at Florida that had a direct impact on wining and losing.
(Smith) really made incredible wining plays whether it was through a blocked shot, an offensive rebound, a pass or whether it's through making a play at the end of the game. He had two game-wining shots, one against Ole Miss at home earlier in the SEC schedule. He made the last shot which was a key shot for them against Memphis on the road. I love watching him play. He embodies everything there is about wining. He's the ultimate competitor. He's the ultimate winner.
Tennessee has won four of the last five against Florida. Has there been a common theme in those victories?
Donovan: They've had good teams. We've had some really good games. I don't know if there's been one common thread or theme. There have been some plays and some games that have come down to the last play but as I've said before, the one thing I look at is without a loss to Vanderbilt, without a loss to (Tennessee) I don't think we win the national championship so I don't know if there is one thing where I'd say, 'We haven't done this or they've done that to us.' We've had some good games. Certainly, last year there they dominated us in the game and in the last seven minutes of the game (this year) they dominated us at their place.
Six months ago you told us how re-energized you were. Looking back, how has it been? Has it been fun?
Donovan: I don't know if it's ever fun. Fun is not a word I would use. I wouldn't use the word fun last year. What's fun is at the culmination of the year and you have a chance to look back and see what's happened. Going through it is never fun. It's challenging. It stretches you in a lot of different ways every season which in a way I kind of like that feeling. But I also knew the position I was in last year where we're at right now, I'm not surprised. There's nothing that really surprised me.
The biggest thing was what challenge did I want to take on and this was the challenge I definitely wanted to take on. Some of the situations we're in right now are not these guys' fault. We've lost guys in the past that we've always been able to offset whether it be (Mike) Miller or (Donnell) Harvey or Kwame Brown but we have not been able to offset the departure of six guys. I knew that coming in what this was going to be like in terms of testing myself, our coaching staff, these guys. I don't think there's anything we're going through right now that caught me off guard or I'm surprised or this is not what I expected.
How did you prepare for this season? Did you change anything about the way you coach knowing what you had?
Donovan: You do that every year. You go about it every year in a different way because the team is different in every experience. The team in 2006 was different than the team in 2007. The teams over the years, every team is a little different. Even though you have the same players coming back it's always a little bit different.
Probably what ends up happening is last year the focus for me was what could get in the way of us not reaching our potential whereas my laundry list of things going into this season was probably longer than any laundry list I've had going into any season because I didn't know what the best situation was for them offensively, how we wanted to play, who we could rely on.
It looked like when the season started our strength was really shooting the basketball. It's been up and down this year for us. Size was an issue for us. Do we play more zone? Do we play man? How much do we want to press? One of the things was turnovers with two freshmen point guards. Can we take care of the basketball? Could we run offense? Those were issues. The length of the season, to keep these guys excited and fresh during the course of the season, you get into February and you start to move into March. There are a lot of things that you're trying to piece together and take a stab in the dark at. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't. There was a lot that went into trying to get ready. These guys have to deal with what they had to deal with because they never experienced it.
At what point after all the success the program has had, will Florida be considered one of the nation's elite programs?
Donovan
robably long after I'm gone. That's kind of how I would look at it. The sustained success of a program would probably be when a person enters this world and is born until the time their middle-aged and they can sit there and say, 'They've always been really, really good.' Since I was born, Kentucky has always had incredible success. UCLA has always had incredible success. There have been some dips along the way or bumps along the road. It hasn't been smooth sailing for every program.In the last 10 years, we could be considered one of the best programs in the country. That would be a fair assessment. I'm not saying the best but we have to be in the conversation about it. The challenge I always felt like here is how do you continue to move in that direction? I don't know if I have 25 years, 30 years, there's no number I sit and say. Whenever my time is done here and the next person comes in I hope it will continue on. At Kansas and Kentucky and UCLA, there have been coaches that have come through and maintained that level.
