1 » While sophomore guard/forward DeVon Walker changed his mind about his decision to transfer and returned to the Florida Gators basketball program, sophomore point guard Braxton Ogbueze remained steadfast in his desire to leave and officially transferred this week. Ogbeuze, who committed to Florida out of Charlotte, NC, decided to return to his local community and play for the Charlotte 49ers. He will sit out the 2013-14 season due to NCAA transfer rules but will have three years of eligibility remaining beginning in 2014-15.

2 » Gators head basketball coach Billy Donovan sat down for a wide-ranging interview with former long-time NBA coach Brendan Suhr on his Coaching U LIVE podcast. The interview, which is reminiscent of a conversation with Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton, covers a variety of topics including why Donovan is a coach, how he describes himself as a coach, if he would play for a coach like himself and how college basketball players have changed over the years.

3 » Baltimore Ravens rookie safety Matt Elam met and spoke with Dwyer High School’s current football players recently, telling the members of his former team that using life’s difficulties to propel them on the football field can benefit their lives in the long run. “I feel like with me going [in the draft], it was a big motivation for the kids because they come from the same neighborhoods, the same program,” Elam told the Palm Beach Post. “I got the chance, and I took advantage of the chance. That makes the kids feel like they’ve got the chance. That’s what it’s all about.”

CLICK TO EXPAND and check out three more BITS of Florida Gators news.

Tags: Baltimore Ravens, Billy Donovan, Bradley Beal, Braxton Ogbueze, Cleveland Browns, DeVon Walker, Draft, Eric Banks, golf, Matt Elam, NBA, NFL, Washington Wizards

Just one week after coming to the conclusion that transferring would be the best thing for his career, forward DeVon Walker has reversed course and instead decided to remain a member of the Florida Gators basketball program.

“Florida is such a great place, and the more I thought about it, I just realized this is where I want to be,” Walker said in a school release. “The coaching staff has helped me get better on and off the court over the past year and I really enjoy being around my teammates, so I’m excited to refocus on my future here in Gainesville.”

Walker played in 24 games as a true freshman but averaged just 4.0 minutes per contest. He scored 20 points in 99 total minutes during the 2012-13 campaign, making just 4-of-22 shots (1-of-7 threes) while grabbing 17 rebounds.

He was the second Florida freshman to transfer this month – point guard Braxton Ogbueze announced his intent to leave the program on May 1 – but made his feelings about the program, the coaches and his teammates known at the time.

“I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’m grateful to Coach [Billy] Donovan, the staff and my teammates at Florida for everything,” Walker said in a school release on May 6. “One of the best years of my life. New friends, new experiences, & new knowledge. Thankful for the opportunity at UF. Goodbye,” he subsequently tweeted.

When Walker decided to transfer, Donovan said the player had “a bright future” and wished him the best going forward. He shared similar sentiments on Monday.

“We always encourage guys to do what they feel is best for their future, and we’re glad that DeVon will be continuing with us here at Florida,” Donovan said.

Minutes may once again be hard to come by for Walker during the 2013-14 season as Florida’s roster is stacked, especially in the frontcourt. Nevertheless, the Gators’ coaching staff is bullish on Walker’s future and see him as an athletic player who can be a contributor off the bench ala Casey Prather.

Tags: Billy Donovan, Braxton Ogbueze, Casey Prather, DeVon Walker

Florida Gators forward DeVon Walker informed the team late last week that he had decided to transfer, and the program officially announced his decision on Monday.

Gators head coach Billy Donovan wished Walker well in a school release.

“DeVon has a bright future, and we hope for the best for him wherever he chooses to go,” Donovan said.

Walker played in 24 games as a true freshman but averaged just 4.0 minutes per contest. He scored 20 points in 99 total minutes during the 2012-13 campaign, making just 4-of-22 shots (1-of-7 threes) while grabbing 17 rebounds.

The second Florida freshman to transfer this month, Walker joins guard Braxton Ogbueze as 2012 commitments hoping the pastures are greener elsewhere.

“I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’m grateful to Coach Donovan, the staff and my teammates at Florida for everything,” Walker said in the same release.

Over the last two offseasons, the Gators have added three transfers including forward Dorian Finney-Smith and center Damontre Harris in 2012 and guard Eli Carter on April 30. Finney-Smith and Harris will both be active for the 2013-14 season, while Carter is hoping the NCAA approves a waiver that would allow him to play immediately without sitting out a year.

Florida also has a pair of five-star prospects – point guard Kasey Hill (Clermont, FL) and F/C Chris Walker (Bonifay, FL) – joining the program next season.

Minutes would have been hard to come by for both DeVon Walker and Ogbueze. The Gators will have just 11 scholarship players on the roster for the upcoming season should Hill and Chris Walker both be cleared academically.

Tags: Billy Donovan, Braxton Ogbueze, Chris Walker, Damontre Harris, DeVon Walker, Dorian Finney-Smith, Eli Carter, Kasey Hill, NCAA

1 » With the 2013 NCAA Tournament set to begin, yet another statistical model has predicted the three-seed Florida Gators to come out of the event victorious. This model comes via Sports Illustrated; it has correctly predicted half of the Final Four participants over the last six years as well as five of six champions. For 2013, the model has a Final Four of Florida, Louisville, Indiana and Gonzaga with the Gators pulling out their third national title in school history.

2 » Georgia Tech has also created its own computerized prediction system – the Logistic Regression/Markov Chain – that has predicted the national champion in three of the last five years. What conclusion did it come to this year? A Final Four of Florida, Louisville, Indiana and Gonzaga with the Gators once again coming out on top as the champion. “It’s the first time in the LRMC’s 10-year history a team that isn’t a number one seed is picked to win the title,” according to Georgia Tech. Read more about this model and its Florida projection by clicking here.

3 » Florida guard/forward DeVon Walker has not seen much court time during the 2012-13 season but remains confident that he will be able to contribute to the Gators in the future. “When you come into a major university you have these dreams,” he told The Gainesville Sun’s Kevin Brockway. “You see the sky is the limit and then you get here and you realize our role and it’s just a process of accepting it.” Walker has compensated for his lack of playing time by busting his butt in practice and ensuring that head coach Billy Donovan notices how hard he is working. Donovan has done just that and said he was prepared to give Walker more playing time when Florida was suffering through injury woes earlier in the season.

4 » For the third time this season, Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal has injured his left ankle. On Wednesday while playing against Phoenix, Beal rolled up on his ankle and did not return to the game. He was unable to put pressure on the ankle and hobbled on his way to the locker room. Beal missed two weeks earlier in the season with his last ankle injury; his ailments have really put a dent in his bid to become NBA Rookie of the Year. Though Portland G Damian Lillard appears to have the award locked up at this point, Beal has been going strong over the last third of the season and now averages 13.9 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game for Washington.

Tags: Billy Donovan, Bradley Beal, DeVon Walker, NBA, NCAA, NCAA Tournament, Washington Wizards

Location: Thompson-Boling Arena – Knoxville, TN [Capacity: 21,678]
Time: 9:00 p.m. EST

TV: ESPN/ESPNHD (Brad Nessler, Jimmy Dykes, Shannon Spake)
SiriusXM: 91 | Radio: Gator Radio Network [Affiliates]
Online Video: WatchESPN.com | Mobile Video: WatchESPN app
Live Updates: @OnlyGators on Twitter and SportsYapper app

Odds: -8.5 | O/U 124.5

On the road again, the No. 6/8 Florida Gators will play in yet another hostile environment on Tuesday and do so this time with a roster depleted even further than it has been in most contests this season.

Florida takes on the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville, TN – where it is 5-11 all-time under head coach Billy Donovan – with just six healthy members of its normal rotation as junior forward Will Yeguete recovers from arthroscopic knee surgery and freshman guard Michael Frazier II sits out a game after suffering a concussion on Saturday.

Donovan, who has been hesitant to give his other freshman playing time this season as he still views them as developmental players, will be forced to play some of his underclassmen on Tuesday. He said during his weekly press conference on Monday that the Gators will not survive with just six players seeing the court in Knoxville but that he is not exactly sure what he can expect from his freshmen at this point.

Continue Reading » Freshmen must help as Florida visits Tennessee

Tags: Billy Donovan, Braxton Ogbueze, DeVon Walker, Dillon Graham, Michael Frazier, SEC, Tennessee Volunteers, Will Yeguete

Fresh off its second league loss in five games, No. 4/5 Florida Gators basketball (22-4, 12-2 SEC) extended its lead in the Southeastern Conference standings to two games with a dominant 71-54 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks (17-10, 8-6 SEC) on Saturday evening at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center in Gainesville, FL.

Florida, in its second meeting with Arkansas during regular season play for the first time in program history, earned a measure of revenge for the initial showdown in which the Razorbacks upset the Gators 80-69 on Feb. 5 in Fayetteville, AR.

Four Florida players scored in double figures, all of whom gave complete efforts throughout the contest. Redshirt senior guard Mike Rosario led the way with a team-high 15 points, but junior center Patric Young made a bigger impact with 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting to go along with seven rebounds.

Ensuring that Arkansas did not take the upper hand out of the gate like it did two weeks ago, Florida opened the contest on a 7-0 run but was soon tied with the Razorbacks at 8-8 after the visitors matched the Gators’ intensity with a 8-1 scoring stretch including seven-straight points from forward Marshawn Powell.

Minutes later, Powell found his way to the bench as Florida junior F Casey Prather entered the game and drew a pair of charges on the big man. The Gators completed a 9-0 run to take a 23-13 lead before being given a taste of their own medicine.

Young left the court with 5:53 to play in the first half after committing his second foul, and Arkansas took advantage with a 6-0 run to get within four of the hosts, a margin that would hold until halftime.

Continue Reading » Florida trounces Arkansas 71-54, Frazier injured

Tags: Arkansas Razorbacks, Braxton Ogbueze, Casey Prather, DeVon Walker, Dillon Graham, Erik Murphy, Kenny Boynton, Marshawn Powell, Michael Frazier, Mike Rosario, Patric Young, SEC, Stephen C. O'Connell Center

Location: Stephen C. O’Connell Center – Gainesville, FL [Capacity: 11,548]
Time: 5:00 p.m. EST

TV: Sun Sports/Fox Sports Network (Dave Neal, Larry Conley) [Channel Finder]
SiriusXM: 93/199 | Radio: Gator Radio Network [Affiliates]
Online Video: ESPN3.com [Blackout Map] | Mobile Video: WatchESPN app
Live Updates: @OnlyGators on Twitter and SportsYapper app

Odds: Florida -26.5 | O/U 128

REPLACING THE IRREPLACEABLE

For the second-straight year, one of Florida’s most important players is having his season cut due to injury. Junior forward Will Yeguete, who broke his foot toward the end of the 2012 regular season and never returned, had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on Friday and is out for at least the rest of the regular season.

Yegeute’s loss hits the Gators hard, but Donovan is more focused on how to attempt to replace some of his production rather than worry about all of the negatives. Junior forward Casey Prather and freshman guard Michael Frazier will undoubtedly see more time on the court, but freshman G/F DeVon Walker – who has already spent time working in the post during practice due to the team’s thin frontcourt – will also be in the mix to fill in off the bench. The problem? Donovan is not necessarily sure that he’s prepared to contribute on an every-game basis.

“I don’t know if he’s ready. We don’t have a whole lot of choices right now,” he said Thursday. “I would say this about DeVon Walker, which I like, is he’s highly competitive. He’s a tough kid. I think he’ll step in there and give us everything he has. That’s a comforting [thing]. I think at this point of time in the season, you need someone to come in that has energy, has toughness.

“Is he going to be in the right spot all the time? Probably not. Is he going to make some mistakes? Absolutely. Has he absorbed enough minutes to have any level of experience to probably handle that? Probably not. But I think for him, I do have confidence in his competitiveness and his willingness to do whatever is necessary to help our team. I feel good about that, but he obviously has a long way to go to continue to improve and get better. We’ll see what he does when he gets out there.”

Continue Reading » Florida-Mississippi State, replacing Yeguete

Tags: Billy Donovan, Casey Prather, DeVon Walker, Michael Frazier, Mississippi State Bulldogs, Rick Ray, SEC, Stephen C. O'Connell Center, Will Yeguete

For the second-straight year, Florida Gators junior forward Will Yeguete will have his season cut short with a serious injury. How long he will be out, however, remains to be seen and a return in time for postseason play apparently remains a possibility.

Head coach Billy Donovan announced Thursday that Yeguete will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on Friday as it was determined by an MRI that there were bone chips floating around in the joint.

“He’s going to need surgery. He’s going to be out…probably best case scenario he’s probably out for the remainder of at least the regular season and probably we’ll reevaluate it then,” Donovan said. “He’s had some significant swelling over the last several weeks. He’s got some floating chips and cartilage in there, which we knew beforehand that was there but it’s not anything that’s putting him necessarily in jeopardy of playing. It was more how he could play with the chips floating around.

“A lot of it was based on pain; he wasn’t in a lot of pain. But I think because those chips were floating around, they’ve probably gotten into different parts of his knee that had just put him in a situation where I think that the treatment going forward is not what we need to do. He’s going to have some arthroscopic surgery to have it cleaned out. He’ll probably do that here at the end of the week.”

He will be out of action for 4-6 weeks while doctors and trainers evaluate his recovery. A return to the court would be Yeguete’s decision once he is cleared to play.

Continue Reading » Florida F Will Yeguete to undergo knee surgery, out at least through regular season

Tags: Billy Donovan, Casey Prather, DeVon Walker, Michael Frazier, Will Yeguete