Florida Gators: KeVaughn Allen Will Seek Release

With Billy Donovan leaving the Florida Gators for the evils of the NBA, the kids he recruited to attend Florida this upcoming year are wondering: Should I leave, too?

When players are recruited to attend universities for any sport, they can be sold on the school and its culture, but it is not an admissions officer that is making the house calls and the text messages, it is the coaches. Coaches are the sellers of the dream and the promise of improving the player to the point that they can be the best player they can be. It is the coach that a lot of these players are most loyal to, not the university.

When head coach Billy Donovan decided to bow out of the Florida Gators basketball program after 19 mostly fruitful years, there was going to be a lot of things he would be leaving behind. Other than that sweet reserved parking spot, and a couple of restaurants, he would also be leaving behind the players he recruited to play at Florida next season.

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The Florida Gators Class of 2015 was one of the better classes in country, with two consensus four-star recruits and two three-star recruits that also received a four-star grade in some media publications. One those key consensus four-star recruits may be rethinking his decision to sign with Florida.

According to his stepfather, KeVaughn Allen, a 6’3 shooting guard from North Little Rock, Arkansas, is a seeking a release from his Letter of Intent to attend Florida because of the departure of Billy Donovan. The 50^th ranked prospect in the Busting Brackets Top 100, Allen was convinced to attend Florida because the championship experiences that Donovan had over other teams like Arkansas, Arizona, and Baylor who were also recruiting him.

“His whole draw to Florida, besides a beautiful university, [was] the coaches,” stepfather John Curry explained to the Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly radio program. “And that goes for a lot of high school kids. They go to a coach, that’s who they go to.”

There is still a chance that Florida can convince Allen to remain with the Gators through this transition period if they can make a sexy hire or have a coach that worked closely with Donovan to get Allen to stay. Long shots like Shaka Smart or Gregg Marshall certainly fit that “sexy” bill, but the chances of them leaving their respective jobs right now are in line with Billy Donovan pulling an Orlando Magic type change of heart for the second time.

More than likely, current Dayton head coach Archie Miller is a more obtainable goal for the Florida Gators even after he signed a massive contract extension that in Ohio until the end of time (aka 2022). He may be comfortable at Dayton right now, but the allure of a bringing back a national power like Florida in a suddenly competitive SEC may be enough to get his attention. With his ability to get the most out of the unranked to three-star talent has had in Dayton, convincing Allen to stay would not be a huge stretch.

Another option for Florida is promoting assistant coach John Pelphrey, who has been with the program for the last 5 seasons under Donovan after head coaching positions at South Alabama and Arkansas. For the past five years, Pelphrey has had responsibilities in recruiting and that kind of familiarity can help in retaining the commitment of Allen despite Pelphrey’s lack of sustained success as a head coach.

Either way, whoever Florida decides to tap as their new head coach, one of the first priorities will be to convince Allen that he made the right choice to attend Florida even without Billy Donovan as his head coach – a tall order considering the kind of success that Donovan has on his resume. Allen, on the other hand, will have a choice to make: loyalty to the coach or loyalty to the school?

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