I have heard from a source close to one of the players, that in practice, Niels Lane passed between someone's legs and it pissed Mike White off. He was called into White's office and left because CMW was on the phone and acted like Niels wasn't even in the room so Niels left. He has been in the doghouse ever since and White will not play him. Strange story if true, but this source is a family member of a player on the team. (not a family member of Lane).
Doesn’t surprise me that White is a control freak because of how many times in previous seasons he has lost games by having the team slow down and try to milk the clock to hold onto a lead. Otherwise known as playing not to lose instead of playing confident winning basketball. My turning point with White was a few seasons ago when we had a 14 point lead on Duke and was taking it to them, then White makes the Gators slow down and play half court offense, totally ruining the momentum we had going and allowing Duke to come back and win. I knew from that game forward that he had no feel for the game and coaching wasn’t his calling. The whole rhythm of the game changed when he did that, the team lost confidence and couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean for the rest of the game. Duke couldn’t have asked for a better situation to take control of the game.
Player makes a stupid play and coach doesn't like it. Happens all the time. I bet there is more back story here. 2018 when we lost by 3 on a neutral site to a team that went deep. With a Duke team that had Grayson Alan that tripped people without getting called for a foul. And a coach that badgers refs without getting T's. F Duke. <joke>Damn, White sucked as a coach.</joke>
Lost a 14 point lead in the second half because of a poor coaching decision. Okay, well that’s not good but if a coach learns from the mistake and becomes a better coach it can be forgiven. That wasn’t the case, he has repeated the same thing in several games since then. He has a way of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Exactly. This story just shows a different behind the scenes side of CMW. I didn’t expect it even if Niels played like trash. Why ignore him after calling him to the office?
I'm so done with Mike White. This is not the way to treat a player, help him improve nor build team chemistry. Anyone think Billy Napier would do that to a player? I know this happens all the time (doghouse) at all schools but...
Hmm... Niels Lane is from New Jersey. Gator Tenor is in Arkansas but has unnamed Lane family sources. I'm not questioning the veracity of the original post, but... oh hell, yes, I am questioning it.
Not a family member of Lane. A family member of another player. I will not give the name to protect them, but this is a legit source. Take it for what you want.
this report being true would help explain a lot of the incomprehensible things about White's teams' performance, but I'm in the same boat as you GP, I can't just accept a message board post like this as gospel without anything else to back it up. sorry gatortenor37, I'm not calling you a liar - your story definitely sounds like it could be true, but I just always am skeptical of insider tidbits like this until there's some kind of additional confirmation.
lol my bad, I was responding to one of his posts in another thread around the same time. The old synapses don't fire quite as well as they used to these days.
Don't necessarily agree with your assessment of the "Lane" situation, far to little information to make those types of accusations IMO. I DO agree about the DUKE game. Coach K even commented how GOOD we were. Possibly the best basketball for 3/4 game we have seen from a CMW team and then the collapse. Sadly the team pretty much went straight downhill after that.
A pass between the defenders legs isn’t always a bad pass. That said, watching Lane play, he’s probably not the guy who needs to be trying that kind of pass.
Larry Bird is the only guy I've ever seen that could do it reliably and get his teammate an easy bucket.
