can’t speak for anyone else, but I never liked MW and never wanted BD gone. You can not like MW and still be rational.
Neither that Jax team nor that UCF team were bad. And those were closes losses. They don't compare to getting blown out on your home floor by an 0-7 low-major.
MW will never be Billy D. Billy had a NBA style offense and has won with Thunder and now having a good season with the Bulls. Coaching matters. Everyone can have a bad game, but look at stats from the last two games. The stat lines will show you why we need to be concerned. If you hired a Rick Pitino type coach, you would not see these type of issues year over year. Hard for a team of 7 transfers to develop consistency and culture over night.
perhaps not- but Pinto is arguably a Top 5 coach in the history of college basketball. There are not a lot of “pitino-type” coaches out there. The same could be said for Donovan. Beyond that point, I’m not interested in engaging in “next coach” discussions. And I say that with all due respect.
Flipping out over this performance (not just the loss) is not irrational, though I guess it depends what you mean by flipping out. Maybe you can provide an example. Since the Duke game in 2017, FL basketball has shown a propensity to go on losing streaks and runs of poor basketball. Tonight's game was not just bad and it wasn't just a one-off.
Most Embarrassing Loss in Gators Athletics History Each season has to be evaluated on its own, and that loss on an island will tell us very little about this year's team. We're still very early in the season, and a loss like that doesn't erase the good graces earned with a win over SWAC and another over Ohio State. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
But that coach made it to the championship game in 1999 before winning it all in 2006-2007. Fans may bitch about how a season is going, but Donovan earned the right to coach here as long as he wanted. Fans venting about games will always happen. Has Mike White shown the same trajectory to get the same leash that Donovan got? Hell no. White’s coaching tenure at UF hasn’t shown anywhere near the potential shown during Billy Donovan’s tenure. Just like with Mullen, are we ok with Mississippi State level seasons, or do we aspire for more as a program?
The loss years ago was by three points. Last night was a blow out. Our team disappeared. It seems historically our players have one or two bad games at the end if the semester in December
Was court side last night and this loss started as early as warmups. Team was loose and disinterested. I guess they bought into the aura of playing an 0-7 team! Texas Southern came to play and best us in every phase of the game including coaching. Southern executed three backdoor cuts for easy baskets against our “defense first” gang. Weakside help…nada!
And like I said there were posters on here wanting Donavan fired after a bad game or season. Fans like these are the ones that run coaches like Steve Spurrier off. Donavan was here 10 years before he won the National Championship. He had some lean years like any coach is going to have. Mike White has been in 4 straight NCAA's one of only 12 schools to do that and has a win in each, one of only 6 schools. Every time Florida looses a game no matter how they play the same posters show up and call for his firing. This has been going on since he was hired. They will be on Billy Napier as soon as Florida looses a game.
It's not at the same level. There was a very fringe group that went after Donovan, this is not the same and I don't think it is a fair comparison. Donovan went to F4's, won the SEC and consistently got top 4 seeds in the NCAA tournament. This isn't some major outlier in an otherwise stellar resume, this is a type of loss that gets repeated multiple times in a season and holds us back from reaching bigger goals. If we were coming anywhere close to pre-NC Donovan level of success I'd be right there with you, but we are not and the criticism is more than fair.
To compare Mike White to Billy Donovan is to insult Billy. Their resumes are in no way even close to one another. Again, Billy made it to the Final 4 in year 3. He recruited well and didn’t have the level of player turnover that Mike White has. He also coached exciting basketball, instead of what we see now. Fans are going to vent at times when they feel the team underperforms. It comes with the territory. A championship game appearance is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> greater than reaching the NCAA tournament and flaming out in the 1st/2nd round. It’s also how each of those tournament games were lost as well. Mike takes the air out of the ball and pulls defeat from the jaws of victory.- Your standard for UF basketball is like using New Year’s Bowl appearances as the standard for UF football, instead of SEC championships and playoff appearances. It is nice to have the former, but the latter is what UF should strive to achieve.
White's big strength during his UF tenure has been his ability to pull the team out of a tailspin when it looked like a season was on the verge of a collapse. In each of the last three years there was a point where we were really struggling, and it looked like we were heading toward a sub-.500 season with no postseason play at all, and in each season White was able to get the team to pull off a big win, right the ship and salvage something from the season. That's why Mike White is still the head coach right now, and Dan Mullen's inability to do that this year is why he's doing TV and Billy Napier is out recruiting. This definitely feels like one of those potential tailspin moments -- once you've lost at home by 15 to Texas Southern, are there really "safe wins" left on your schedule? It's up to White to pull up on the stick again and get the plane righted. Fortunately for him, this happened early in the non-conference season, so he has plenty of time.
Well, it sort of does. This is a “bad loss”. Ideally you go through a season with zero “bad losses” (maybe the random road loss in conference to a bottom tier SEC team). You especially don’t get blown out at home to a low conference opponent. The FSU win and OSU were obviously “good wins” to offset that bad loss, and obviously the FSU one was especially critical for White because of his personal losing streak. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say that one win is the difference between me being “over” the White era. I think if you added another FSU loss to last night then I would have officially crossed that line. But at 6-2 with 2 good wins we’ll just have to see it play out.
Spurrier was NEVER run off by fans. EVER. Not even .001%. I have said this a few times on here - I know this for a fact because my parents best friends are huge Bull Gators and very close to Steve and Jerry (my parents aren’t rich - but their friends are!). They told us this after speaking with them. It all had to do with 1) Foley not supporting him about the FSU crap and then he wanted to see if his scheme worked in the NFL. Why did Spurrier want to come back after Zook was fired? Steve has always said Gator fans are the best in the world. I also think Steve is honest and blunt enough to say so if what you claim is true. People that spread this lie, which it is, are doing it because they are claiming some type of higher moral ground, like “you complainers are at fault for…but people like us don’t do that” which is a load of crap. There is NO evidence to support what you saying complainers are at fault for. It is hyperbole at its finest so you and others can virtue signal. Why? Can’t you just disagree with their opinion? All big time university sports programs have passionate fan bases - positive and negative. None of them are going to scare coaches away, especially a guy like Steve.
People put WAY too much emphasis on "bad losses" in December. You know who doesn't? The selection committee. You can always "big win" your way out of "bad losses." If we don't get the "big wins" then the "bad losses" weren't the problem, but perhaps merely a symptom. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
