I don’t think CMW is basketball’s Ron Zook. I think he is a lot like Amanda Butler who was the women’s coach for 10 years. Amanda was very well liked, was a former Gator player and produced decent results, going to the NCAAs four times, wining a game three times and going to the NIT four other times. She recruited well and brought some real talent to Gainesville but the talent didn’t stay. They moved on for whatever reason. After ten years it was time to move on. (Given that it was Women’s Basketball and that she was a Gator alum I can see it being very hard to consider cutting ties). When she left, however, the administration brought in Cam which turned out to be a disaster! The program floundered and he was fired last summer after being accused of abuse. Like Amanda, Cam was “old school” and didn’t seem to know how to motivate todays players. Like it or not, todays star players are not country boys from French Lick. They are skilled and savvy but also surrounded by sycophants and need real guidance. They desperately need to trust their coach. Did Amanda get three extra years because she was an alum? Maybe 2? With CMW as with Amanda, something is not quite right. It is not working and maybe the best for both to move on. I think Women’s basketball has found the solution but they didn’t go to UConn or Tennessee to find it it was in house. Great coaches pop up at every level because they understand and care about their players, the players of their time. This is also why they typically recruit very well. I think that is what we need to be looking for next.
True just would not be upset. Really no idea how any coach would do, will just hope if it happens who ever it is does well.
Simply to drop in and repeat: NO COACH at UF should be given 7 years OR MORE’ to sniff a conference title. No extenuating circumstances afforded. Plain and simple. We knew by year 5 what we had and it has just been confirmed and reconfirmed. Time to move on. And it should never happen again. UF is to good a school in a hotbed region of recruiting for a quality Coach not to lead his team AT LEAST to seriously competing for a conference title inside of 6 years.
How do you come up with a record of 18 and 13? His record thru his 7 complete years at Florida is 22.5 and 11.7. That’s much better than the 18-13!!
White's overall record, not counting this year, is 123-75, Jack - that works out to 20.5 and 12.5 per season. Reference: Michael White Coaching Record | College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com if you add in this year the average gets worse, but I don't think that's fair since this isn't yet a full season. Kenpom ranks our average strength of schedule during White's six full years as 28th in the nation. for comparison, Leonard Hamilton's FSU teams played the average 24th strongest schedule during the same period and went 142-55 for an avg of 23.7 wins and 9.1 losses. also for comparison, during the same six year span FSU: - finished ranked top 16 or better four times and top 10 twice - won the ACC regular season championship once and were runners-up twice - made it to the ACC conference tournament championship game twice - appeared in four NCAA tournaments (same as UF) with an Elite Eight, two Sweet Sixteens and one Round of 32 finish - won 6 of 7 games against White's Gator teams
Look at all those other metrics you posted. You know what those do for a program? They make a season fun because it's full of smaller successes. The scraping into the tournament metric alone does not make for an entertaining or fun to watch program because there is no direction. It's a bag swirling in the wind only the wind finally stopped and the bag dropped. Are we to believe that FSU had a better fan base and basketball program prior to White's tenure here? FTR I think Hamilton and company started buying rosters years ago. No way they had a program to sell to the type of the recruits they were getting. Now they do because they improved and we fell off the map.
I’ve also reached a similar conclusion. But I worry MBB success requires recruiting which now requires blatant cheating I’d rather have the current results. Here is a thought experiment. Let’s say I told you the next coach would make us, from year two, the top SEC program for a decade. The catch: it is Will Wade. Would you take it?
Blatant cheating is apparently not against the rules anymore. So, if you are unwilling to even push the envelope, there is no chance to contend for championships. I would eventually get used to Wade or Pitino, Sr if they got results. It's a terrible thing to say, but it appears that more than most here want results.
Interesting you bring up LH. It took him 7 years to even make the NCAA tourney at FSU and another 3 years to get past the first weekend. So basically it took LH 10 years to get FSU to the place where you cite all of the above stats. FSU fans wanted to fire LH. Now they want to give him a lifetime contract. So some perspective in your post is important. I don’t know what the answer is for MW but I do know what his biggest problem is. His biggest problem is he followed Billy Donovan. Gator fans didn’t need patience with BD cause he went to a FF early, but I do remember that 5 year stretch when he couldn’t get past the first weekend and Gator fans openly wondered if he was the answer to the future. Hiring the right person is hard. It is such an inexact science. It could be better or it could be worse. I don’t know the answer. No one does and they are lying if they say they do. “Wes Chandler was Percy Harvin before Percy Harvin was born.”
I like Mike White, but he is just way too nice in my opinion. Here is what he said after the game yesterday. “We knew we had to shake something up,” White said. “You hate to admit it as a coach, but sometimes you are trying to tick a guy off or two. You’re trying to make a statement. Let’s just throw this lineup out there and maybe it will ignite somebody, and it did. I thought Niels Lane was fantastic. He played thirteen minutes and was +14. You’re +14 and you take one shot in thirteen minutes, it’s a good example for all young people and even his teammates that you can affect the game in so many ways. His energy level in press and half court was evident and it spread. It’s crazy how one guy can bring it like that, and it can rub off on the next guy who can rub off on the next guy.” Really? Just now, you decide maybe you want to tick a guy off by putting them on the bench? This shows me 2 things. 1) He is scared to upset the players, and 2) he is not bright enough to know that even if players are making mistakes, sometimes it is because they aren't getting enough minutes, and they are nervous as hell because they never get in any games. Nobody is going to complain about minutes if you are substituting liberally and playing more up-tempo, which is what we thought we were getting with MW. I am not as worried about players making bonehead plays early in the season if it helps them later in the season. I want fresh legs and max effort. Everything else will work itself out. Go hard and you are going to get minutes so we can keep the starters legs fresh. I want the starters to know they are going to get replaced regularly so there is no need to pace themselves. I get that the better players will get a few more minutes than the others, but I would want players to know that when they sign with Florida, they are going to get in the game. Every game.
Can’t play everyone in every game but I understand your point. Players need to earn playing time by effort in practice and making the most of when they do get to go into the game. And sometimes you just have to wait your turn if you are a freshman playing behind upperclassmen.
I figured the length of Hamilton's tenure would actually be mentioned sooner in response to my post, and it's definitely something that should be factored in to the conversation. but if we're going to start making caveats, we should also point out the massive difference between the two coaches' starting points. Ham took over an absolutely terrible program that had losing seasons in 7 of their last 9, including four straight losing seasons before his first year. He had a winning season in his second year, then won 20 games in his fourth year, did not have a losing season after that and showed a fairly clear pattern of improvement as he built FSU back to respectability while playing in probably the toughest hoops conference in the country. FSU fans were mad at him primarily because he couldn't ever get them over the hump to knock UF off our perch as top team in the state while Donovan was here. If Billy had stayed, or if we had hired a more competent coach after he left, Ham might well have been fired after all. But we hired Mike White, and Ham immediately went on the best run of his FSU career and knocked us back down to second fiddle. meanwhile White took over a powerhouse UF program with very good fan support (at the time) and resources, plenty of returning talent and a ton of national and recruiting prestige. He had his best season by far in year 2 with a bunch of the previous coach's players and recruits, but since then every season has been the same disappointing mediocrity with very similar results: bad offense, inconsistent play, frustrating losses at home, alarming levels of player turnover, regular losses to our rivals, and most concerning to me, nothing close to a cohesive team identity or pattern of improvement. and now this year - a season where we were told he had finally constructed a team that met all his specifications - here we are again, watching bad offense, bad home losses, a losing SEC record and yet another year on the bubble sweating whether we'll even make the tournament. at this point I think it's become pretty clear to most of us that we've seen the ceiling on Mike White's abilities and that our program is trending in the wrong direction under his leadership. Nothing I've seen to date from White gives me any confidence that he has the ability to turn this thing around and get us headed back the right way. you also make a good point that hiring a new coach is not necessarily going to mean we automatically do better. I agree with that 100%, but in my opinion that's a reason why Stricklin and co. need to conduct an exhaustive and thorough search and then do everything they possibly can to support the new coach. It's not a reason to refrain from making a change when you've come to the realization that the current coach is not quite good enough to get UF where it wants to be. we've seen seven years of Mike White, and for me that's plenty of time to assess his ability and find it lacking. I hope to God he proves me wrong and this team goes on a massive run the rest of this year and gives us something serious to cheer about. If not, though, I would like to see a change made, and I think that's a reasonable position.
IF you are a productive upper class man, IF you play good defense, if you make good decisions with the ball….THEN you deserve minutes above a younger player. If you are not, then no, you earn your minutes by how you practice and play in games. Point , when Billy played Dan Wener (?), he wasn’t great offensively, but I understood why he trusted him. I’m having a hard time figuring out why Mike trusts some of his. I’m sure he is comfortable with those decisions, but the results say, he might want to rethink that, and give some of the younger guys a chance, for this year and next. That shouldn’t upset his locker room too much, and even if it does, it’s the right message.
You make some very good points. There is a lot to take away from your post. Much appreciated. I’m leaning towards letting this next class come through and see what he does but again I’m conflicted and would understand a change being made. “Wes Chandler was Percy Harvin before Percy Harvin was born.”
I don't give him a pass. I think that he is a good and clean coach that has had a lot of bad luck with injuries, but my vote does not count. I pay the booster fees for five Level One seats, but SS won't and shouldn't take my phone call even with that level of monetary commitment. It is all about what the really big money boosters want. And that is unfortunate because most of them have a football mentality.
Hamilton’s teams were always great on defense and terrible on offense. Something changed in recent years. They became solid on both ends of the floor. I wonder if they hired an assistant to help with the offense.
I'm not going to lose my mind with disappointment if he returns as coach next season, but if he does the first thing I will think when the schedule is released is I wonder which 12 games we are going to lose.
