Florida figure out college basketball’s ‘secret sauce,’ and it makes them national championship favorites

It was never seeded better than fourth, and it made the tournament’s second weekend just one time. There was a general belief that UF was a program that had experienced a few nice moments over the years, caught lightning in a bottle for a brief stretch in the mid-2000s, and now was poised to live out the remainder of its basketball existence as a notable also-ran. Such an existence would not have been atypical for Florida.

On a football-crazy campus, Gator basketball was always fighting an uphill battle when it came to trying to capture the complete attention of its fan base before late December. Before Billy Donovan arrived in Gainesville in 1996, the sport wasn’t even a post-holiday hobby. Despite playing in a power conference since the inception of the SEC in 1932, Florida had played in just five NCAA Tournaments in its history.

It had advanced past the opening weekend just twice before Donovan was hired. The hiring of Donovan, who was just 31-years-old and (despite his slicked back hair) looked like he could have passed for 21, didn’t make much of an impact in the college basketball world initially. Donovan was a name, sure, but that was more from his playing days at Providence and his tight-knit relationship with his college coach, Rick Pitino.

After spending five seasons as an assistant at Kentucky under Pitino, Donovan was hired as the head coach at Marshall where he went 35-20 over two seasons and never flirted with an NCAA Tournament appearance. Despite the lack of anything resembling an initial splash, the hiring of Donovan ushered in an era of success in Gainesville that no one saw coming. Under the direction of “Billy the Kid,” Florida made 14 trips to the Big Dance, won six SEC championships, advanced to the Final Four four times, and until 12 months ago, was the most recent program to win back-to-back national championships (2006-07).