Double Duty: Donovan Among Six Men to Play and Coach in NCAA Tourney
Two-time NCAA championship coach Billy Donovan, returning to the national semifinals with Florida on the heels of three straight regional final setbacks, was the leading scorer (20.6 points per game) for Providence's 1987 Final Four team although he hit only 3 of 12 shots from the floor when the Friars lost to fellow Big East Conference member Syracuse in the national semifinals.
Bill Guthridge, who guided North Carolina to the Final Four in 1998 and 2000, was a sophomore member of Kansas State's national fourth-place squad in 1958, but he played in only six games that season and did not participate in the Final Four at Louisville.
Donovan is among the six individuals to both play and coach in the Final Four. The first five were Vic Bubas, Dick Harp, Bob Knight, Bones McKinney and Dean Smith. McKinney, who averaged 9.8 points per game as a junior center for 1946 NCAA runner-up North Carolina, was the only one of the first five individuals in this category to average more than 5.5 points per game as a player in the season his alma mater reached the Final Four. McKinney had attended Carolina arch-rival North Carolina State as a sophomore in 1941-42 when he led the Southern Conference in scoring before spending three years in the Army.
Knight and Smith, the only men to play for and coach national champions, compiled modest career scoring averages of 3.8 and 1.6 points per game, respectively. Knight, hitting 14 of 36 field-goal attempts, scored 30 points in 11 NCAA Tournament games for Ohio State and Smith scored four points in seven playoff games for Kansas. Knight and Smith combined for half as many points as players in 10 Final Four games (eight) than their total of Final Four appearances as coaches (16).
Harp averaged 4.9 points per game for 1940 runner-up Kansas and Bubas averaged 5.5 points per game for 1950 third-place finisher North Carolina State. Following is a capsule look at the six individuals to experience the glory of the Final Four both as a player and as a head coach:
| Final Four Participant | School as Player | School as Head Coach |
|---|---|---|
| Vic Bubas | North Carolina State (1950) | Duke (1963, 1964 and 1966) |
| Billy Donovan | Providence (1987) | Florida (2000, 2006, 2007 and 2014) |
| Dick Harp | Kansas (1940) | Kansas (1957) |
| Bob Knight | Ohio State (1960, 1961 and 1962) | Indiana (1973, 1976, 1981, 1987 and 1992) |
| Bones McKinney | North Carolina (1946) | Wake Forest (1962) |
| Dean Smith | Kansas (1952 and 1953) | North Carolina (1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997) |
NOTE: McKinney played two seasons for North Carolina State prior to World War II military duty.