By
Pat Dooley
Posted at 6:01 AM
13 years later, Donovan recalls Gators’ second consecutive national championship
It’s difficult to believe that it has been 13 years since Florida completed a historic sweep of NCAA basketball back-to-back national titles.Today is the anniversary of the second championship in 2007.
So we asked Billy Donovan for a little oral history on that season. Here’s Billy D:
“It’s crazy how time goes by, the ebbs and flows over 20 years. But the one thing for me going into the 2006-07 season was what I tried to do was go around and talk to people like Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, Coach (Rick) Pitino. I spent some time with Mary Wise (Florida’s volleyball coach). All of them had won back-to-back championships.
“I wanted to know all of the things they had to go through. The biggest thing they told me was -- distractions. I spent the offseason writing down all of the possible distractions and the things that could get in the way of the team. I talked to the guys about all of them -- young guys coming back instead of going to the draft, all of the expectations, how you are going to get everybody’s best shot.
″(Sociologist) Dr. Harry Edwards came in and did an unbelievable job.
He drew a mountain and a basketball on top of the mountain. And he told the guys, ‘Every time you play a game, you’re the defending champs but the ball has rolled back down the hill and you have to go back up the mountain. But you can’t go back up the mountain the same way.’ He told Joakim Noah, ‘You set all these records in the NCAA Tournament. Teams are not going to let you do things the same way.’ He told Al Horford the same thing.
“And he told them all that the guys who are going to make a big impact are going to be the guys coming off the bench. Which certainly turned out to be true.”
