You could see fans in the seats if you flip the camera around to the roadies. That will give the illusion that the place is rocking every game which will make more people want to go to the games which would actually put people in the seats. No I'm not joking either.
To me this has been White's worst coaching job to date. Really seems to have little feel for this team and how to push the right buttons. Might be the fact that we had much more talented guards in previous years that would offset White's offensive ineptitude. How are good to great 3 point shooters regressing so much that they become poor 3 point shooters under White. Here are some examples. Jalen Hudson: 17-18 - 40.2%; 18-19 - 28.0% KeVaughn Allen: 16-17 - 40.1%; 17-18 - 33.7%; 18-19 - 32.9% Scottie Lewis: 19-20 - 36.1%; 20-21 - 31.8% Myreon Jones: 19-20 - 40.3%; 20-21 - 39.4%; 21-22 - 29.7% Brandon McKissic: 19-20 - 36.8%; 20-21 - 42.9%; 21-22 - 27.9% Of course Tre Mann's name will come up as his % went way up Freshman to Sophmore year, but he was a 1st round draft pick and often times it was him creating his own shot for himself because he was that good. Speaking of last year's team, now it kind of feels that the ODU loss was the end of White's tenure. White couldn't get Florida to the Sweet 16 with Tre Mann, Scottie Lewis and CC after a gift victory by 15 seed ODU over 2 seed OSU. While I was pissed as White blew that game, I was encouraged last summer that he was supposively bringing experienced transfers that were his type of players. Now so far to date, you have White's worst team since year 1. Seems like a long shot to win at SC, but the Gators better if they want to have any chance of saving the season.
There is a contagious virus going around though and many are either sick or afraid of large public gatherings (I’m not one though). Something to consider when they play this bad, some might not think it is worth the risk. I don’t blame anyone that doesn’t go - painful to watch and pricey.
Some people have continued to make excuses for the one common denominator of our offensive ineptitude. I don't know if standing around while a guard dribbles out the shot clock takes away flow from shooters but we continuously see "great shooters" miss open shots in this offense. Not that it's a great offense for creating open looks. I supported White up until late last year but not in the same way some have. I always thought he was handed a great deal of bad luck with injuries which he was, but his teams never improved over time regardless of whether he had a full team or not. I HOPED it would improve but I was never pleased with the product. I just hoped he would figure it out and things would click some day. I don't feel like that anymore. Too many home losses. Too many bad losses. Too much ugly basketball. Too much roster turnover. Too many quirky rosters. Not enough noticeable attempts at change.
Fair question. I used to be along the lines of @akaGatorhoops in terms of wanting to be a top program in terms of overall support. I think at this point, I would just settle for moving in the right direction. Instead of looking at what we don't have, I try to look at what the next steps need to be, and I see a great need to do a better job of engaging our fans in so many ways. With that said, I see a program that saw a slow steady growth in the fan base and then a recent decline. First: the students ---------------------- The student section peaked out in the late 90's to early 00's and started to decline somewhat at first and more extensively afterwards. The rapid increase in regular success of the basketball team was a huge part of it. Jeremy Foley made it easier for the students to have access to the basketball games by removing the need to buy a $28 season pass (I think that's what the price was the last year we had to pay). Having teams that played well at home and were nationally competitive just made it really fun to attend the games. The first boom fell when the students were no longer permitted to camp out. However, that fall off wasn't immediate as we had the 04's and it was hard for the students not to get excited about those teams. But it didn't take long before we had a lot of young people standing around being mostly silent during the home games (in comparison, of course, to what it had been just a few years earlier). The second boom fell when the renovations butchered the student section by reducing capacity, flattening it, and moving everybody a little further back from the action...the cherry on top was to provide everybody a comfy seat to sit in. So for the students, we've seen a growth spurt from the Tupac years/Albert's Army/the sun setting of our Final Four squad/the intro of Billy right on through the rise to success in both regular season and postseason. Was it @Killer_Rabbits that we used to toss in the air? The band played Call Me Al at the right time (occasionally twice in a game, and sometimes not at all), not just at the under 8 TO no matter what the game situation is. And then we've seen it regress to basically what it was in the mid-90's. (All due respect for those of you from the ALLEY days and the 80's as well, that's before my time). Everybody else: ------------------- Rarely have the non-students been a significant part of the gameday atmosphere other than a handful of big games during the season. The tried and true that have shown up in the good times and in the bad times are noticeably quiet and lacking in energy. But what we did see was an increase in interest with season ticket sales and more frequent 10,000+ actual crowds. We had, and rightfully so, a ton of people in Atlanta. We weren't close to being outnumbered by the Ohio State fans (Glendale anybody?). NBN seemed to continuously grow in popularity through the Billy D years. Local sports talk thrived with basketball talk. As AKA and others will tell you, we still struggled in most years to show up for SEC Tournament action or at distant locations (like Las Vegas against Kansas). But the gains made from 10-15 years earlier were refreshing by anybody's standards. To me, we had a lot of passion (relative to where we had come from), and that led to some nit-picky criticisms, it always does. I think there's a story behind AKA's signature that calls out such criticism. A strong fan base powers through the tough years and is always ready for what's next. We don't have a strong fan base now, and it will likely take another long run of consistent success to build that fan base again. Here's the problem: success of our fanbase to the UAA is measured almost exclusively in terms of season ticket sales and money in. Success of our fanbase to the rest of us has more to do with showing up and bringing good energy to the games and even traveling to away games (or getting GATOR fans from other parts of the country involved). Naturally there's at least some cross-interest there, but it's mostly a large disconnect as energy level, and keeping students interested even after they graduate doesn't seem to register on anybody's radar, and empty seats (as long as they're paid for) just don't seem to bother our AD. Which brings us to where we are now: apathy, small fan base, low energy, mostly quiet message board...I think I heard on the radio today that we are now 29-27 in our last 56 SEC games...performance is obviously a factor as well. But, I'm not ruling out the idea that flipping the camera, might solve all of our problems. Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
And the move to electronic tickets didn't help. It makes it considerably harder for fans to transfer or sell tickets (and yes, I know that hundreds if not thousands of us know how to do this fairly easily, but it shrinks the market and makes it harder for folks to pick up last minute tickets which leads to fewer people attending). Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
A few message board posters: "Gators don't support basketball" Former Kentucky coach Tubby Smith after a game at Florida: "that was the best atmosphere I've ever been a part of" Something similar to that anyway.
Following up on this and a later post, every year MW teams get more and more stagnant as the year progresses. The outside dribbling, few cuts, and lack of teaching counterpunches (Felder can post many of the guys guarding him all day and CC still struggles to pass out of a double) lead me to the fact that mw seems to choke the creativity/fun/flexibility out of offense. This puts our guys in tough spots and every year it seems like we have a team with fragile confidence. At the end of the day I do not believe MW teams are equal to the sum of the parts, and that is the minimum bar a coach should meet.
I was there when they killed camping out. Big mistake. We would huddle behind the bushes at Tolbert Hall to make sure we got our first row seats still.
In the vein of NIL maybe we can start paying the students to come to the game. They can hold up a picture of their favorite player.
Thanks WES. That was a pleasant trip down memory lane and a thoughtful post. I'm a little older than you (undergrad '93) and played in basketball band from the end of Sloan to the first season of Kruger (didn't play senior year or my trumpet teacher would have killed me). It was a blast being right next to the action for all of the home games (including all the special views of the cheerleaders when they . . . well. . . . . ). I was never a part of the camping out crowd, though as I recall you might have been? Or maybe that was after your time. The highlight of my undergrad was seeing a depleted Gator squad beat two 7footers (who can name 'em?) + Chris Jackson with LSU. I was in Texas during Kruger's FF run, but watched every game. I was fortunate to return to Hogtown in '05 and was in the environment for four major championships. It was a blast being on campus during those years, though as a doc student, I was not as engaged - could only make it to a game here and there. Don't mean to make this about me, though. It's just my limited perspective. I remember UK games in the late 80s where the O'Dome was probably somewhere between 40-60% UK fans and they were LOUD. That's passion and it comes with winning and tradition. You got to witness some of the earliest major Gator hoops success as a student. I haven't been to ExacTech or whatever it's called, but hope to one day. Would also like to make it back to an SEC tournament one day.
great post, really brings back some of my earliest memories as a Gator fan - but the fact that you, a Gator Basketball lifer, have not yet attended a Mike White-coached game kind of speaks louder than any of the words written. Gator Basketball needs an energized community in Gainesville and the surrounding areas to sustain the program. it can happen, and your post details some exciting history when it did happen. Gainesville will never be anything other than a college town, but it does love a fun and exciting basketball team. Stricklin will get this next hire right, I have to believe that.
Gainesville is still a small town. Take out the UF and SFC Students. Excitement and make it easier to get to games. I used to drive into town to take my FIL to games as he enjoyed them ( would turn his hearing aids off, lol) it just got too difficult to get him to his seat. Remembering the ole AA games and the vibration of the building and the the giant leap to the O dome…. I really had hoped they built a new basketball facility at a different location. Newer, better parking and access. But alas…. Make the experience more entertaining, heck run more golf cart shuttles on light days to get the old folks in (with folks chanting Gator cheers) or something to draw people in early like a carnival atmosphere. And then, get a coach with Energy Go Gators
Shaq and Stanley Roberts. I was there. The student section was not filled at tip-off but filled up in the second half. IIRC some of the Gators rubbed Dickie V's bald head after the game.
The hope of the football coaches for yet another facility after sending baseball off to the hinterlands.
I've got one excuse. Yes, the missed open shots, the missed free throws, and the brain-dead turnovers were beyond frustrating and had me thinking that some of our guys appear to...ahem...shall we say wilt during crunch time. It was tough seeing such a great game by Castleton get wasted. But, I will say the Gators played hard and I'm sure everyone of them would have loved to have had a chance to correct their mistakes. The refs on the other hand gave LSU a huge bucket that replay showed was after the shot clock expired. Yet the refs couldn't be bothered to review the play and correct their mistake that was key in preventing our team from being able to tie or take the lead in the minutes afterward as we got within 2 points (which would have been a tie) several times and within 1 point (which would have been a lead) once. Burned me up!!!! Mistakes are one thing. But, refusing an available opportunity to correct a mistake is sickening.
