ATLANTA — The question came out of the stands, as direct and on-target as a Lee Humphrey jumper.

"Hey, Jeremy, is Billy going to Kentucky?" the fan yelled at the Florida athletic director, Jeremy Foley.

"Yeah, sure," Foley replied. "He's got his bags packed there in the back."

Touche.

If only it were a laughing matter.

Florida coach Billy Donovan's future is the subject of intense speculation at this Final Four, a topic as interesting to many basketball fans as the UCLA-Florida semifinal today that's a rematch of Florida's win in the final last year.

For the record, Donovan used yesterday's interview session to once again deny he's thinking about any of it.

"The minute I get on the road, I give my phone to my secretary," Donovan said, parroting a quote he's given since the speculation began. "I've talked to nobody. All I've done, to be honest with you, is I got a lot of bloodshot eyes right now from watching a lot of tape. That's all I do."

No one can deny he's the hottest commodity in the business right now.

It's easy to see why.

Eleven years ago, Donovan took over a program that nobody thought could win consistently. He guided it to the national finals in 2000, a championship last year and, in maybe his best coaching coup yet, has the Gators (33-5) within two wins of another title despite a huge target on the team's back wherever it went.

These days, the whole idea of leaving Florida for Kentucky doesn't seem like the slam dunk it would have been only a few years back.

"I love the University of Florida," Donovan said. "I love my experiences. I love everything about it. I love coaching my team. I love my administration. It's been great. I mean, I'm very, very happy here right now."

Of course, "right now" in the coaching business is exactly that. Next week could be different. After all, Tubby Smith said after Kentucky was ousted from the tournament that he expected to be back next year; a few days later, he was gone to Minnesota.

The man Donovan is coaching against, Ben Howland, knows what that's like.

He resurrected Pittsburgh from nothingness to a perennial tournament team. He hated leaving Pitt and all the relationships he'd built with the players, the community, the fans. But UCLA (30-5) was his dream job.

"There's no way I could pass it up," the Southern California native said of the job offer he got four years ago.

The solace he took was that he knew he left the program on "very solid ground," and left his job to longtime assistant and friend Jamie Dixon, a former University of Hawai'i assistant.

"I'm very, very proud to have been a part of helping that," Howland said.