Florida’s legendary coach won two national championships and 467 games at Florida
SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Long-time Florida men’s basketball head coach Billy Donovan was announced on Saturday as a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2025. Donovan coached the Gators for 19 seasons from 1996-2015, totaling two national championships, four Final Fours, six Southeastern Conference regular season championships, four SEC Tournament titles and 467 wins.
Fittingly, the announcement came on Saturday with the Florida Gators back in the Final Four this season for the first time since Donovan led UF to the 2014 Final Four.
Donovan guided the Gators to a No. 1 national ranking in five different seasons, posted sixteen straight 20-win seasons and earned seventeen consecutive postseason appearances during his 19 seasons at the helm in Gainesville. His 467 wins as an SEC head coach trail only Adolph Rupp, and only Rupp and Joe B. Hall have won more SEC championships.
There was a time when any of these goals seemed unattainable for the University of Florida men’s basketball program – until March 27, 1996, when Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley hired the up-and-coming Donovan who turned the Gators into a perennial national power. Under Donovan, the once unattainable goals of the program became a reality, as he established UF among a very short list of elite programs in the nation.
On Feb. 28, 2015, Donovan became just the second coach in college basketball history to pick up his 500th Division I win before his 50th birthday, joining Bob Knight in that exclusive club. In 2007, the Gators became just the seventh team in NCAA history and the first in 15 years to win back-to-back titles.
For those who followed Donovan’s career, it came as no surprise that he made Florida basketball a winner.
He was a winner at Providence College, where he led the Friars to their best season in school history and a trip to the Final Four in 1987. He was a winner as a New York Knick playing with the elite athletes in the NBA. He was a winner in five years as an assistant at Kentucky and was part of the Wildcats’ Final Four run in 1993. He was a winner as a head coach when he inherited a struggling Marshall program and in two short years won more than 60 percent of his games and put fans back in the seats.
Next, he next helped create hoop hysteria in Gainesville.
Under Donovan, Florida set a school record with 17 straight post-season appearances from 1997-2014, including 14 NCAA Tournament appearances and six Elite Eight trips from 2006-2014. The Gators also put together 16 consecutive 20-win seasons from 1998-2014.
UF made the school’s first-ever appearance in the National Championship game in 2000 before winning the title in both 2006 and 2007. Donovan won 35 NCAA Tournament games, more than any other SEC coach ever has, and his 467 wins rank behind only Adolph Rupp in SEC history.
After the school had just one Southeastern Conference championship in 77 seasons prior to his arrival, Donovan has tallied six SEC titles (2000, 2001, 2007, 2011, 2013 and 2014). Florida and Kentucky are the only two SEC schools to capture consecutive league crowns in the past 35 years. The Gators’ run of three outright SEC titles in four seasons (2011, 2013 and 2014) is the first such stretch since Kentucky in 1995-98.
Since departing Florida in 2015, Donovan is in his 10th season on an NBA bench, winning 400 games over five seasons leading the Oklahoma City Thunder and nearing that same number now in his fifth season with the Chicago Bulls.
