University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan and other college basketball coaches were in town yesterday to play in Virginia Commonwealth University. Coach Anthony Grant’s charity golf tournament at Hunting Hawk Golf Club.
Proceeds from the tournament will benefit the Ram Athletic Fund and the Peter Paul Development Center, an outreach and community service ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia that serves Church Hill and communities in Richmond’s east end.
Grant served as Donovan’s assistant for 10 years at Florida. Here are excerpts from conversations with Grant, Donovan and Virginia coach Dave Leitao.
Q: If you could change one thing in college basketball, what would it be?
Grant: I know I can’t, so I’ve never thought about it.
Donovan: I think the first thing I’d look at would be the summer rules on two fronts: summer rules in recruiting, and summer rules in the amount of contact we can have with our team. The fact that in July we can’t talk to the high school coaches, can’t talk to the kids, no phone calls, I think is a bad rule. I think you’re finding more and more people are making bad decisions because they’re not getting a chance to know kids.
Leitao: I’d probably like to return it as much as you can back to its purity, the amateur nature of it, kids having fun, getting educated, having a great experience. The business of basketball . . . is such a big part of it, it’s tainted the purity of it.
Q: What would you change about recruiting?
Grant: For college coaches, there’s really no down time. Shorten the length of the recruiting season.
Donovan: I would definitely have more access. I’d open it up. I’d give coaches an opportunity to get on the road and develop relationships. You may have a kid who grows up and sees something from a distance that’s attractive but doesn’t get a chance to know it. That’s not good.
Leitao: It’s not a perfect world, never will be a perfect world. . . . I don’t know if you can change it to make it better.
Q: What would you change about the NCAA tournament selection process?
Grant: I think VCU should get in every year . I think more weight should be given to regular-season conference champions. At the mid-major level, that’s kind of an afterthought.
Donovan: I’ve always been a big believer that there should be more teams that go. . . . What that number for expansion would be, I don’t know.
Leitao: We’d all like to see more teams involved in the process.
Q: Mid-major teams such as VCU have a hard time scheduling teams from power conferences on a home-and-home basis. How can they change that, or is it just a fact of life in college basketball?
Donovan: I think it’s probably a little bit of a fact of life. Maybe for a major to go on the road and play a mid-major maybe doesn’t make sense. . . . I don’t think it’s any disrespect toward VCU; it’s probably more respect for VCU. For someone in a major conference who’s looking at their RPI, they may be thinking about playing another power conference and get a better RPI hit on the road. VCU, playing them , that’s a hard game to win. But you’re supposed to win that. If you’re going to play a hard game to win, why not play someone that’s ranked No. 1 in the country?
Leitao: I’ve been on both sides of it. . . . When you leave your own arena to play a game, usually you do it for a specific reason. It’s either television or money or something else close to that. If you do that and you don’t get anything back, and it’s a good mid-major team that can beat you, there’s really no positives.”
Q: Would you schedule VCU on a home-and-home basis?
Leitao: It would have to be something in it for them and something in it for us.”
