John Clay's Sidelines

Stumbled across this Friday post from Dick Weiss of the New York Daily News.

An exceprt:

Kentucky apparently has not waited long to hire a new basketball coach. And it’s a huge name.

Sources told the Daily News that Florida players were just pulled out of class and told Billy Donovan was leaving that SEC school to become the ‘Cats’ new basketball coach. We believe it.

This would be a home-run hire.

Turned out that wasn’t the case, as we know now.

There are some who swear that Donovan is still interested. One e-mailer insists that Donovan is merely making sure that Larry Shyatt will be his successor at Florida before he comes to Kentucky. That’s why Donovan issued that statement on Friday saying he wasn’t interested in UK. He wanted to make sure Anthony Grant took the Alabama job, so Shyatt would be first in line at Florida. I’m not biting on that one. My guess is that Billy D. will stay in Gainesville. But, as my e-mailers point out, Nick Saban said he wasn’t going to be the coach at Alabama.

Wrote Joshua:

You willing to give up on Donovan that easily? Did you see what Pitino said about coaches that make bold statements like “I’m not leaving here” or “I’m not going there”? He said it was a precursor.

Also, no one saw BD speak those words from his own mouth. From what I’ve seen, that statement came from U of F and not Billy himself.

Yeah, Grant looks to be headed to ‘Bama, so it doesn’t look like that’s the direction UK’s headed, but I don’t for one second think that just cause someone makes a Saban-esque statement that it’s a final decision. Personally, I think Donovan would be an idiot not to upgrade to UK, but I’m not a reporter. You, on the other hand, you’re the man. And you’re supposed to be non-biased and skeptical. Hopefully you’ll write some more about this in the coming days and weeks.