Billy Donovan Kids Quotations

I can tell you that these kids have a great deal of love and concern and care for one another.

I get great pleasure seeing our kids enjoy the game. It's not about me or how young I am. But it's about the people you coach all the time, and I get a lot of pleasure seeing our kids celebrate.

I get great pleasure seeing our kids enjoy it, our administration enjoy it, our fans enjoy it. It's not about me.

Hopefully, the success we have had this year and in the past is something that kids can look at and say, Florida is very competitive nationally and inside their league.

Our kids just kept battling and playing hard. I mean, to win a championship game and not even get to 50 points is truly remarkable.

Part of it is youthfulness, but the one thing about the kids is that they're in every game.

My personal opinion, after talking with these kids and their families, is they will be back next year.

I still feel like the kids in our program could get a whole lot better and could improve. And I think another year in college for those guys, or two, would prove to be valuable to them, rather than someone taking a chance or an opportunity, and those guys sitting on the bench and not having a chance to develop.

You have to do a great job evaluating those kids maybe in the top 25 to 100. So we could (eventually) have some junior and senior classes.

Whether it said across their jersey Cinderella, George Mason or another team, for us our basketball team, it's just a matter of going out there playing. Our kids were feeling the same thing that George Mason kids were feeling. The feeling was not any different between teams.

This will be our second time to face South Carolina this season. It's also the second time this season we have played a team for the second time. They played with great emotion the last time we played each other. We got off to a good start early, but they were the better team that night. It was a six-point win for them, but they had us down 15 points at one point. This game will be a challenge for us. They have competitive kids and they totally out performed us. They beat us in every facet of the game. The challenge to our team is to take it one game to the next. Our last time against them is over. Our last home game is over.

With the age limit, I think you're going to continually make college basketball very young. Some kids handle it better than others. ... It makes it very challenging, very, very, very difficult.

We'll have to deal with being ranked one, two or three in the country. These are the kids I would love to deal with those challenges with.

This team is just different. Different kids, different time, different everything.

We just recently had a function where we had to go into the student assistance fund to get players some clothes. Some of our kids come from backgrounds where getting a suit on short notice is difficult.

On TV, it looks great ... but it's really a scary environment on the floor. The other thing it does is it takes away from what a great win Florida State had. They shouldn't (have to) be addressing their lack of security or whatever. ... They should be talking about how great their kids played and what a great win it was for their program.

This group of kids is living in the moment and living for today.

There might be some truth to (more pressure playing close to home). Kids say, 'There's so many people there I want to do so well,' so that can happen. If you're out in San Diego you're just kind of playing. (But) I don't think these guys will feel that way -- I hope they don't.

It's a totally different team. This one is special because these kids have shown a level of selflessness and play the way the game should be played. They look out for each other. They care for each other. That shows on the court.

It's great for our kids and for our program. But I'm just a small part of it.

The biggest thing is, our kids play the game the right way. They're going to make the extra pass and move the basketball. We're averaging almost 20 assists.

The second half was a back-and-forth basketball game. Give Arkansas credit. They made some plays and their kids played hard and I thought it was a great college basketball game that both teams had a chance to win at times.

I'm going to support any decision our players make, but I hope to be very involved in the process. The thing you have to understand is that our kids don't want to just make it to the NBA. They want to excel.

I'm so proud of these kids. I'm shocked that we're 22-6. To me, these kids have really, really overachieved.

I'm happy for the kids. All season they have given me everything they had.

If you have a guy that's talented but totally into himself, who never had to be unselfish a day in his life, it's really hard to change that mentality. Now we've got good kids who have been unselfish and have worked hard and gotten better.

I have to give Georgetown a lot of credit. They did a good job defensively. I thought we had some looks coming in and around the basket. We were very, very fortunate to win. It could have gone either way. I think the Georgetown kids played a great game.

I really felt like probably the last 32 minutes of the game we were totally outplayed, outperformed, out everything by South Carolina. Their kids played a great game. I don't think the score was indicative of how much they outplayed us in this game.

I don't know if they will. Like I said, we have to go through this ... I'm not really concerned. For me, it's about the growth and development of our team and our kids getting better.

I derive a lot of pleasure watching these kids play. We don't have guys in the locker room talking about not scoring enough points or not getting enough shots. They play the right way. They really do.

I am very, very proud of these kids. It has been such a remarkable run up to this point, just with so much uncertainty surrounding this season with people leaving early and these guys having to step up.

I feel bad for these kids that the past has to be brought up to them. Some of them weren't even here. Some of them weren't even playing. The only constant is me. I just hope people write about these kids today.

I don't think these kids would do what they did up there if they weren't comfortable with it.

These kids are throwbacks. It's very, very refreshing. You're dealing with different, different kids. Does Chris Richard want to start and score 35 points every game and grab 15 rebounds? Yes. But they're willing to put the team before themselves.

These kids are about challenges, competition. I don't think they look at playing at Georgia any differently than they do playing St. Joe's. In their minds, being 13-0, they are going in there feeling that they are underdogs because it's a road game in a place that's tough to play.