INDIANAPOLIS - The boy wonder turns 41 in May.
"He's not 'Billy the Kid' anymore," Florida assistant coach and longtime pal Donnie Jones said about his boss. "That used to be his identity."
The first glimpse of Billy Donovan back at the Final Four for the second time in seven years suggests very little else has changed.
He could still pass for one of his players. The widow's peak that makes him look like Eddie Munster's older brother is still coal-black. The blue eyes are still crystal clear. And Donovan is still defending himself against charges he was handed too much too soon.
"I think the perception has been that our roster is filled with McDonald's All-Americans and that's the furthest thing from the truth. We've signed a lot of McDonald's All-Americans," he said Friday, "but none of them stayed here."
At least not for very long.
People who don't know much about Donovan think that might be a recurring theme. He played four years at tiny Providence, but most remember only the last one. That was in 1987, when Donovan and teammates Eddie "Pops" Lewis and Delray Brooks hoisted enough 3-pointers to change the college game and carry a then-unknown young coach named Rick Pitino to the Final Four.
Or else they remember the cup of coffee Donovan had with the New York Knicks. Or the five years he put in as a Pitino assistant at Kentucky before landing his first head coaching job. Or the two years he stayed in that job at Marshall before parlaying it into the Florida job in 1996.
And so it hardly helps separate perception from reality when Donovan says, as he did recently, "You know what, I have been so blessed."
But blessed is not a word anyone would have used when the season started. The Gators lost considerable experience and 60 percent of their scoring off last year's team, leaving Donovan to mold four sophomores and a junior into the opportunistic squad that faces George Mason in the first semifinal Saturday night.
And blessed was definitely not the word even Donovan would have used when he first arrived in Gainesville, Fla. The roster was bare, the facilities were worse and the only two sports that mattered to anyone in the state - as in Texas, Oklahoma and a dozen others - were football and spring football. Pitino, who was still Donovan's sponsor, practically begged him to stay away.
Yet like everyone else, Pitino underestimated his disciple's appetite for work. Sleeping a few hours each night, recruiting like a madman and playing the same helter-skelter style he learned from the master, Donovan had Florida in the Sweet 16 by his third year and playing Michigan State for the national title in his fourth.
Instead of savoring those achievements, though, Donovan wound up having to defend them. His quick rise through the ranks left some coaches griping that Donovan hadn't paid his dues. Run-ins over recruits with a few deans of the profession tagged him as someone fond of taking shortcuts.
"I think when you have success, people always look for reasons to say whatever they want to say," Donovan recalled. "At 34 years old it wasn't that Billy Donovan did a good job coaching. ... I think when you are young, you're never going to get a level of recognition because that's the way it is, because there has to be a reason why Florida has been successful. Well, they get all the best players in the country. That's an easy answer."
And as it turns out, the wrong one.
Mike Miller, who led the Gators in 2000 and now makes his living in the NBA, stayed two years. Donnell Harvey lasted one year. Kwame Brown signed a letter of intent and never showed up, jumping straight from high school to the pros. Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh, both juniors, left after last season to chase the NBA dream with mixed results.
All that coming and going, coupled with a five-year run during which Florida exited the tournament in the first and second rounds, masked some very important changes.
"We used to play only one way: line up and we'd outscore you," recalled Jones, who's been with Donovan since the Marshall job. "Billy felt like he had to prove himself. He was still identified as a 'Pitino guy,' and he was at a school with very little tradition and not much interest.
"Somewhere along the way, he learned the real key to building a program was consistency. He's no less competitive," Jones added, "but he's willing to adjust a lot more - whether it's our players or the way the other team plays."
The quality has made this Donovan's most satisfying season. It began with Florida ranked outside the top 50 in most quarters because of the personnel losses. But it's closing with Donovan taking the sons of two men he played alongside or against - Sidney Green's son, Taurean, and Tito Horford's son, Al - to the apex of the sport.
And in at least one sense, it's forced even Donovan to acknowledge how much time has passed.
"You know, I often said this before," he laughed, "I wouldn't be coaching right now if Sidney Green passed the ball more to me when I was a player."
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org