Sloan was a great recruiter and cheated to get David Thompson and NC State took a year off from the NCAA tournament with a perfect record so that he could play the next year. Kruger is a great coach and I was shocked that he came to UF after the Sloan/Defoe horrible year.
Don Devoe was actually a very good coach, but, at least at UF, he thought that he was a military commander. He ruined the team that year.
Bang on Norm Sloan all you want. He brought us our first SEC regular season champions, while paid Shaq was a freshman at LSU. He recruited tough people under the basket. CMW doesn’t hold a light when it comes to Sloan, both recruiting and running a consistent program. He recruited and landed the #1 HS player in the country, twice. David Thompson and Vernon Maxwell. Mike White hasn’t sniffed the top forty players. Besides back then Florida was just about an intramural team before he got there. As for the allegations against him were petty and they fed him to the NCAA to cover the Football program that was under investigation. Vernon took money from agents, again the top player in the nation. Sloan didn’t know about that. Think Zion at Duke didn’t take gifts from agents. At least Duke didn’t feed Coach K to the NCAA. CMW has to be judge on the current state of D1 basketball, along with the transfer portal. Sloan had to recruit against teams with long history of winning programs and build a competitive program, he did that without the transfer portal and more. I hope Coach Mike White can add to his elite eight, but for now we are stuck at a play in game with a smaller University, winning one then out. This year we probably are a stretch to get in. How can other programs deal with the current situation, but not us! Recruiting doesn’t remember how many people got hurt, only who is going up. With the UF athletic program not marketing Gator Basketball, no NIL deals that are out of this world for top twenty players and finding ways for season ticket holders to get fans in the seats if they aren’t coming. In this day and age, will call tickets in Nashville for music and sporting events are done for every venue. Help facilitate a winning fan base and a winning program. Midnight madness got Billy D off to a great start with the fans and wins starting climbing. We need to get behind the program just like the football program, or we are always going to be disappointed, unless you just want to see talented basketball players come in make the trek to Gainseville, to give us another home loss. This has got to stop!
Agreed - esp. in that Lon Kruger is one hell of a basketball coach. He took over a team with an interim coach (captain Ahab, who many on this board would associate with the lowest of the low in Gator athletics). Schintzius and maybe others quit the team. We had a smaller version of Hayes at center (Dwayne Davis, 6'7") and no real center in Kruger's first year. I don't remember the specifics about when Dan Cross came in, but Kruger had a very solid floor general in Dan Cross, a solid shooter in Craig Brown, and an interesting assembly of players (Da Meat Hook, Kuisma, Declerq) who worked their asses off and overachieved in large part due to great coaching.
The team was ruined before DeVoe came in. His military style (he was a military guy) just wasn't going to play with Schintzius. I actually think you are right that he was a solid coach (some with disagree and rage against him, understandably). But DeVoe didn't have enough time to ruin the team. He was just an interim in a tough transition.
Agree with you that Devoe was a good coach. He did really well for the Vols until they wanted to get Wade Houston's son Allen. I think that he or somebody else said that he was a no nonsense coach in a nonsense program.
What Sloan did wouldn't register on the radar now days. He could basically tell the NCAA to kiss his butt and go right on coaching.
It didn’t get better than seeing Brown come off of a screen, get the ball from Cross, and, all in one motion, nothing but net. We don’t set those screens anymore. I also seriously doubt that, with this coach, we would see Hill and DeClercq on the floor together. Please award me some goody points for spelling big Andrew’s last name correctly.
Just looked it up and Monte Towe will be 69 this year. Many thought he was heir apparent to Sloan before all the crap hit the fan.
I think Devoe did what he was told to do and go in and implement some discipline. I think he took it too far and the season got derailed.
Not banging on anybody just providing some historical perspective for those that seem to have forgotten. As for DeVoe, I can't recall a worse coach in any Fla sport. Couldn't care less what he did elsewhere.
Recruiting has always been a problem at Florida. Billy was the first and only coach to have success with that, but it was not consistent. Some of it had to do with Billy's team first (not me first) system that HS hot dogs want no part of. The lack of blue blood status and the influence of agents steering the best HS talent to blue bloods worked against Billy. You can go back to Kruger to see how recruiting has run off other coaches. After our FF, we were unable to land Vince Carter. I think that and other recruiting losses is what spurred Lon to head to the Big 10.
I know he might not be a popular pick, but I'd be open to hiring Anthony Grant. I know a lot of people look at his results at Bama as a reason not to give him the keys, but that was 7 years ago. Since then he was the assistant coach under Billy D in the NBA and has been head coach at Dayton since. In his 1st year, Dayton was 14-17, but by year 3, Dayton went undefeated in the A10 and were 29-2 overall ranked 3rd in the country. They had a 20 game winning streak before the season was canceled. The issue a lot of people have with White is that the Gators never win big in any year, but I know it's the A10 and not the SEC, but could you ever see a Mike White team win 20 in a row with that same Dayton team. Last year they lost their whole team from the year before, but this year they've now won 9 of their last 11 and have wins vs Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. They now have a chance at an large bid if they finish strong. Plus, I think Grant would kill it at Florida in recruiting and he's from Miami so he has great ties to the state. I think he's ready to take on the job and make Gator basketball fun again.
They also are doing it this year with almost all freshmen. They should be a monstrous team next season.
I’ve been calling for Grant for several years now but the white lovers say white is better. Mind boggling there are people who actually that that is true.
For me, it is about the interview. Ask him (whoever he is) what is his vision of the program and listen to his answer. If you get "coach speak" then I would take a pass. But if he has a plan, a la Napier, then you figure out if what is their answer aligns with what you think is correct and then you make the call. Otherwise, you say "thanks for your insight" and move on. If Grant has learned from his past, and we are prepared to move on from MW, then I say "welcome aboard!"
Was DeVoe actually fired? I don't know if an interim can be fired as the head coach since he was never hired as head coach. If he wasn't we haven't fired a head basketball coach since Sloane.
