LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Florida plays host to Kentucky in an SEC basketball game on Wednesday night, the Gators will do so on Billy Donovan Court at the Exactech Arena in Gainesville.
It’s an ode to the former Florida coach who won a pair of national championships over 19 seasons before leaving for the NBA in 2015 and whose success the Gators have found difficult to replicate.
If you want to be the coach who follows the coach who replaced Billy Donovan, then you are Todd Golden. The 37-year-old Arizona native is in his first year as the Florida head coach. His Gators bring a 14-13 overall record and 7-7 SEC mark into the matchup with the Wildcats.
They do so without the services of their best player, Colin Castleton. The 7-foot center was averaging 16.0 points and 7.7 rebounds as well as leading the SEC in blocked shots (78) before breaking his right hand in a 79-64 win over Ole Miss on Feb. 15. It was Castleton who scored 25 points in Florida’s 72-67 loss to Kentucky on Feb. 4 at Rupp Arena.
With Castleton out and Florida barely over .500, this could be the first season since 1979 that the school’s football program — the Gators went 6-7 under new coach Billy Napier — and basketball program finish with losing records in the same school year.
It was 1996 when the 31-year-old Donovan took over the Gators. Jeremy Foley, the Florida athletic director, had quizzed Kentucky coach Rick Pitino and UK AD C.M. Newton about Donovan, who had played for Pitino at Providence and coached under Pitino at Kentucky before becoming the head coach at Marshall. Both Pitino and Newton said Billy D. wasn’t ready. Foley hired him anyway.
Genius move, it turned out. In 14 seasons, Donovan went 467-186 overall, 200-110 in the SEC. His 2000 Gators lost to Michigan State in the national championship game. His 2005-06 and 2006-07 teams won back-to-back national titles, the first to do so since Duke in 1990-91 and 1991-92. No team has done so since. His 2014 team was upset by eventual champion UConn in the Final Four.
A year later, Donovan jumped to the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. After five years in OKC, he’s currently in his third season as head coach of the Chicago Bulls, who are 26-33.
Meanwhile, back in Gainesville, Florida first hired Louisiana Tech’s 38-year-old coach Mike White to fill Donovan’s rather large shoes. White enjoyed success. He was 142-88 in seven seasons, including 72-52 in the SEC. His second season he led the Gators to the Elite Eight, where Florida lost to Frank Martin and South Carolina. He recruited Keyontae Johnson, Terrence Mann, Scottie Lewis and Castleton.
But White wasn’t Billy Donovan. And when Johnson collapsed on the court on Dec. 12, 2020, during the pandemic, never to play another game for the Gators, Florida never quite recovered. After going 53-35 over his last three seasons, White jumped to fellow SEC member Georgia. Jumped before he was pushed.
“Gator fans ran Mike White out, that’s basically what happened,” said Pat Dooley, the longtime Gainesville Sun columnist who hosts a radio show and podcast. “There was too much negativity.”
Enter Golden, 57-36 in three seasons at San Francisco. The Dons lost in the first round of last season’s NCAA Tournament to Murray State.
The Gators have been up-and-down in Golden’s debut. After an 0-2 start in conference play, they won six of their next seven games, including a 67-54 thumping of then No. 2 Tennessee in Gainesville.
Florida has lost four of five since, starting with that five-point loss at Rupp. Alabama torched the Gators, 97-69, in Tuscaloosa before an improving Vanderbilt beat Florida, 88-80, in Gainesville. Then came the win over Ole Miss and Castleton’s injury.
With their center confined to the bench in Fayetteville last Saturday, Florida put up a good fight in the first half before letting go of the rope early in the second. Arkansas’ 17-2 run led to an 84-65 victory for the Razorbacks.
“We’re obviously kind of in the middle of re-inventing ourselves a little bit,” Golden said afterward.
At Florida, it has been that way since the days of Billy D.
