Billy Donovan Probably Isn’t Very Happy This Morning

It was quite the season for Billy Donovan and the Florida Gators.

They won the SEC regular season title, and went on to the Elite Eight before losing to those pesky Butler Bulldogs, coming up just short of a trip to Houston.

But hey, there’s always next year, right? Oh wait. They lose Chandler Parsons, Vernon Macklin, and Alex Tyus? Well, they could be hard to replace.

The good news is that the Gators return a nice frontcourt mix of Patric Young, Erik Murphy (no, not this guy), and Cody Larson. The bad news is that Murphy and Larson were arrested last night on felony burglary charges for trying to break into a car.

The even worse news is that Larson was already on probation.

Not exactly the way you want the team to start the off-season if you’re Donovan. I mean, these were are/were expected to play big roles next season after losing the three key players that we mentioned. And they now have felony charges against them? Not good.

I had the Gators ranked 22nd in my early 2011-2012 poll, but without some depth in the frontcourt, this team won’t nearly be as good.

Sure, they’ll still have the lightning quick backcourt of Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker, but they are gonna need someone inside to help out Young, will obviously be drawing a lot of attention now that Macklin and Tyus are gone.

And well, he’ll be drawing even more attention if Murphy and Larson aren’t on the team next season.

UPDATE: Donovan has suspended both from “basketball-related activities” for the time-being.

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