Gators' Donovan Unresponsive to Criticism

The University of Florida men's basketball coach Billy Donovan is experiencing a drawn-out mutiny of sorts, with four of his assistant coaches leaving for other jobs over the past four years and three of his players for this past year expressing plans to turn pro or transfer. I can understand that, with the two national championships that the Gators won in 2006 and 2007, opportunities for advancement would naturally arise for assistant coaches. But earlier, freshman guard Allan Chaney expressed plans to transfer to another school because he wasn't being given enough playing time. Star guard and leading scorer Nick Calathes will most likely (try to) turn professional after only this his sophomore year. And now starting center and number two scorer Alex Tyus has said that he is leaving UF for another college because he feels that he is more a power forward than a center, which is the position that Donovan insists he play. Donovan's reaction to all this seems to be to blame everyone else but himself. His explanation for the players leaving the way they are is that, with such a turnover in assistant coaches, the recruiting had suffered and UF didn't get the players who were really hungry to win and play as a team. In other words, he is insulting his own players! When one player leaves, that's one thing. But when several leave, a picture begins to form around a coach who is so certain of his correctness in everything that he regards his own stubbornness as a virtue.

Pat Dooley, the sports editor of my local newspaper The Gainesville Sun, wrote a column essentially sucking up to Donovan and exonerating him of any responsibility in recent Gator defections and dissent. Why would Dooley take this road? Could it be that he realizes that Donovan will be the one left in town and that he wants to cultivate a friendly, sympathetic relationship with the Florida coach to make his own job easy? If so, it raises a question about how legitimate local sports journalism is and can be. Or is the term "sports journalism" in itself an oxymoron?

I understand that Billy Donovan played a big role in Florida playing an excessively soft out-of-conference schedule these past two seasons. And that factored heavily in Florida being passed over for the NCAA post-season tournament. But since the Florida coach seems incapable of assimilating criticism, I expect more of the same next year. With Billy Donovan learning nothing, accepting no criticism, blaming others, and receiving accolades from his newspaper buddy Pat Dooley.

I'm planning to continue rooting for Billy Donovan's Florida Gators, but I'm afraid that their future success ultimately depends on an unlikely major attitude adjustment on the part of their coach. But I also acknowledge that Donovan has his own "formula" for winning (and winning is the bottom line for his employment here) and he doesn't want to stray from it. Even if it alienates his own players.

Just recently Richard Pitino, a Louisville assistant coach under his father Rick Pitino, was hired to be Donovan's new assistant coach. Hopefully, this new addition will be more in line with the Florida coach's "formula" and add some stability to the program.