Billy D Gets A Chuckle Out Of Hoosier Hysteria On Twitter

By Randy Renner, Senior Writer

Billy Donovan had no idea he and his wife had flown to Bloomington, Indiana, late Thursday and then flown back to OKC early Friday.

He’s not quite as plugged into the “TwitterSphere” as others, "I don't really follow it to be honest," he said Saturday.

All sorts of reports were posted on Twitter Friday afternoon and on other spots around the internet claiming that Donovan had been at the Bloomington airport and on the Indiana University campus Thursday night and Friday morning.

Of course Donovan took it all in stride, laughing at how he wouldn't have to answer any more Indiana questions now that someone else (Archie Miller) had actually gotten the job.

But he did answer a couple more questions about all the Hoosier hysteria that seemed to swirl around him for the last few days and especially on Friday.

“I was here,” Donovan said when officially asked after Saturday’s Thunder practice where he was on Friday morning.

“I was not there (Bloomington) I was here at practice and actually had a couple meetings and then I was at Russell’s bowling charity event last night.”

As for all the internet chatter Donovan said “I don’t really follow it.”

And then he said again how much he enjoys his current job.

“I love it here, I’m committed here, I’ve said that from the beginning. Now I’m not gonna talk about other situations or specific jobs because I don’t think it’s fair to the institution or the people that are in charge there. So even though somebody had me flying out of town, that’s fine, I wasn’t it’s not like I was hiding, I was here.”

He did end up with some nice things to say about the Hoosier program.

“Indiana’s got great tradition, a great program, incredible fans. But again, all my concentration focusses on here in getting ready for Houston tomorrow.”

Oh yeah...the Thunder do have kind of a big game with the Rockets Sunday afternoon. A team the Thunder tend to match up well against, the three previous games have all been close, coming down to the closing seconds.

With that in mind and since the Thunder and Rockets could very well meet in a first round playoff series is he tempted at all to hold anything back? Keep anything special under wraps?

“Yeah we’re gonna hold the triangle-and-2 and the box-and-1 for a little bit later,” he joked. Everyone got a good laugh and then Donovan got serious.

“Going into the game I don’t think you don’t wanna have a game plan of let’s hold things back and be very vanilla because you still wanna go out there and perform. And the other thing is every game is on film...EVERY game is on film.”

In other words the Thunder and the Rockets know each other’s tendencies quite well. Now in a playoff series, you can make some changes and some tweaks. But for a regular season game you tend to do what you’ve done all season.

There is one aspect to Sunday’s game that has Billy D curious.

“I’m anxious to see how we play (Sunday), an afternoon game, three days after our last game, how do we come back out?”

Afterall the Thunder have won six of their last seven games. The lone loss was to Golden State “and maybe give Golden State the credit for maybe why we didn’t play so well but outside of that game we’ve played really well.”

So Donovan is wondering if his team can keep the momentum going or has the time off broken their rhythm?

There’s not much evidence to draw from. OKC has just played two games on three days rest and the record is 1-1. The Thunder are 4-1 on two days rest and 1-0 on four days rest...so 6-2 with a little extra time off.

Does it mean anything? Maybe we’ll find out Sunday afternoon.

Oh and by the way, for everyone out there who thinks Donovan misses coaching college basketball and can't wait to get back at it guess what?

He didn't even watch all of his old team's thriller with Wisconsin which Florida won with a buzzer beater.

"It was a late game, I only watched the first half."

He was probably really tired from that imaginary trip to Indiana.

Randy RennerComment