I know, I was being sarcastic too. You are right, Billy isn’t coming back and neither is the level of play that we once enjoyed.
I know that several people on this board, you included, have been asking for White to bring in an offensive guru type for several years now. Either White is clueless and doesn't see that his offense continues to be mediocre at best (unlikely), or he's just that stubborn and thinks he alone will get it fixed. Now in year 7, I think its definitely White is stubborn. I never see White consulting with other coaches on the sideline and nothing seems to change regardless of the players on the roster. You make really good points about expectations and making the tournament each year. Imo, most likely the bottom will fall out at some point under White, which means we'll continue to see the same exact problems that arise every year until this happens. White not addressing his offensive issues makes me think he'll never change unless perhaps Stricklin gives him an ultimatum to bring in an offensive guru coach, which probably won't happen. With the SEC continuing to get better, where does that put Florida? If the rest of the SEC is getting better and Florida isn't, it won't be long until the bottom does fall out. How many more years does White get if he's unwilling to make the neccessary changes, but we squeak into the tournament? At some point, Stricklin can't just accept that if the program is stuck in neutral. I still really hope this past week was just an early season setback, but with White's track record, it's hard to be optimistic. I'm in no way hoping the Gators lose so White is canned. I hope something clicks and we go on a tear. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any growth in White's coaching ability at this time. I really really hope he proves me wrong.
Remember Don DeVoe? He was hated by Gator fans, but he was the Vols coach that took them to 10 NCAA tournament when it was much harder to make The Dance. Why did he get fired from UT? He wasn't Allen Houston's father. Amazing that he was available as an interim coach, but a bad fit with the players that Sloan had recruited. He truly was the no nonsense coach for a nonsense program.
Anything of his own creation. He said nothing new and quoted someone else. It's what aka has been saying from the start.
White finds himself..yet again..on the hot seat. This is it for him. He either makes a deep push in the tournament or the new AD starts looking for a new HBC.
Starting to not have motivation already to go to games, or even watch on television. I know what White brings to the table, and it doesn’t give me confidence. I do hope he can figure it out for the kids sake.
In his 7th year, this was supposed to have been one of Whites best teams. Yet it looks like that it will simply be ‘another’ of his average teams that are frustratingly inconsistent. He should NOT be allowed yet another year and another year to finally demonstrate that he is capable of developing consistency in his players. Either he leads these players this year to an incredible run of consistency, or he needs to be shown the door.
And the referenced article has a section "Three teams with questions," but only one question is asked for one of the teams, and other than the punctuation mark, it isn't really a question. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
I think it's a fair question, but to me, it's not one that I process during the season. Probably not even something I worry about after the season. During the season, I always hope for the strongest finish possible. We knew going into the Oklahoma game that this team was playing ahead of expectations. Really, we have one dud on the schedule, and that's a hangover game against Texas Southern. We're 2-2 against our 4 toughest opponents to date, and one of those wasn't that close (W vs. SWAC). The other three could have easily gone either way. All things considered, I don't think we are currently significantly better than or significantly worse than where we thought we'd be at this point in the season. I can only tell you how I feel about Mike White once the season is done. If there was one thing I'd look for, it would be players on the current team not hitting the transfer portal. I would just like to get back to a primary focus on developing young players in the program. Is Mike White learning from past mistakes in this regard or should this be an expectation going forward? It's fun to watch kids grow from within. All due respect to the transfers (I enjoy them as players, and they are fun to watch on this team), I just don't think that should be a primary way to build a basketball fan base or a program, for that matter. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
With the experience level of the players and being the type of players that White prefers, the expectations were that if White was gonna do something then this was his best opportunity.
Disagree. I never heard or read anything like that. Nobody knew who these transfers were before they signed. Were Mann & Scottie not White's type of players? When we signed KBJ there were hopes that he would be the difference maker. Folks probably felt this was a year that White needed to do his best coaching, but nobody really knew about the quality of the roster and questions about big man depth were raised. Heck, we basically replaced the entire team, aside from Castleton & Duruji.
Well you are disagreeing with White because he said this was his most experienced team and was pleased with it before the season started. Here’s his direct quote on Nov 3. “Ahh, we’ll see. I think it’s a really skilled group, and older group. A willing an accurate passing team, potentially one of the better passing teams in our league. Best passing team I’ve had at Florida. You just hope the ball keeps moving against high level defenses of course. You hope the selflessness continues under the lights, I think we have some good individual defenders but we have a ways to go in terms of how good we can be collectively defensively. But I like our experience, I like our toughness. We have a chance to be good Steve.
Who doesn't question this team? I am not sure what we have. 6-0 to start, 1-3 since then. We know we are not a good shooting team but what happened to our defense?
