Basketball Confidential

Billy Donovan only thought he was swimming with the sharks when he was coaching basketball in the Southeastern Conference. A couple of weeks ago he found out what it’s really like to swim with the sharks when he and his son Brian got a look at Great White sharks up close and personal off the coast of South Africa.

“My son wanted to do this because he’s got such an interest in sharks so we went to South Africa and went down in the cage to see them up close,” Donovan said earlier in the week. “It’s an experience of a lifetime. We saw several of them and they’re monstrous. You can’t appreciate how big and how fast they are on television. I came away with a very healthy respect.”

Donovan said the largest of the sharks he saw was in the 15-foot range. Great Whites are known to grow to 20 feet and weigh a ton.

“These guys were plenty big enough,” Donovan said. “We didn’t get to see them right up at the bars of the cage, but they were close enough that you could really get an understanding of how strong and powerful they are.”

IS MO-MO A POSSIBILITY?: Despite reports from a Southern Cal website that Lamont “Mo-Mo” Jones (6-0, 175, Mouth of Wilson, VA Oak Hill Academy) is all but committed to Arizona, the Gators are still very much in the mix. Jones is said to be working out a visit to Gainesville in the next few days and folks in New York think he’ll be a Gator by the end of the week.

For the rest of the story on our Full Court Press basketball board, click on this link:

https://www.gatorcountry.com/swampgas/showthread.php?t=109954

Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.