It strikes me how often we scored 80 and 90 points in league games that year, hell we put up 106 vs. LSU and 114 vs Auburn that year. The main problem for White is his high water mark was with someone else’s players. Once it transitioned to 100% his players, it’s been a struggle putting it together. A few teams seemed well constructed on paper and just failed to perform. I wondered about the scoring this year. We aren’t miles away, but as per usual with White teams about 2 or 3 bad losses has this team slightly behind where it could have been if things went well even accounting for the “flaws” in terms of what’s missing.
So we had pretty strong scoring 2016-2017, and started out red hot in 2017-2018. But man, after that Duke game that year it’s like the light bulb blew out. I remember thinking in that season it was like the offense was shell shocked after blowing the Duke game. Who would have thought 5 years later the offense would just keep getting worse each year. The last few years have been weird. This year it’s apparent we don’t have those elite guards, so everything we try to do is a challenge. But man, whatever “scheme” is going on just doesn’t seem to accomplish much. Ive said for several years White needs an offensive guru type assistant, but we might be beyond that at this point.
We have averaged finishing 5th in the SEC under White. Averaging top 3 in the SEC over time seems like a good goal for Florida basketball. Would you agree? To put this analysis in your phrasing, if we stay as the 5th best time in conference and never a conference title, will you be forever satisfied? I suggest that averaging 5th in the conference in a coaches 8th year is disappointing, and said disappointment is not deserving of being called out for being forever disappointed.
Averaging Top 3 in the SEC is a taller task now than it was twenty years ago. But it's hard to be optimistic given the instability of the past few years. White always seems to cobble enough pieces together and motivate them that we'll never be embarrassing but if we've fallen behind Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee as programs then that's a big issue.
Do you think it’s Coaching? Like CMW is too much stick and not enough carrot so they are shooting scared? I remembered when Jalen Hudson lost his shooting touch as a senior. That was all in his head smh
MW is the Will Muschamp of gator basketball. Everyone in the AD likes him, good on defense, bad on offense, and not enough self awareness or raw ability to address his own deficiencies. Only way I can easily sum him up.
Well Lopez won a national title both before and after UF I think. MW didn’t even win a conference tournament or make the NCAAs before came to UF, which in retrospect should have been a big red flag. And maybe I am misremembering, but I seem to remember Lopez as a bit of a curmudgeon. And to be clear, I supported the MW hire, I didn’t know a lot about him, but lots of national basketball people were saying he was a rising star and that Foley hit a home run. But he hasn’t been at all what was advertised. Sometimes seemingly good hires just don’t work for whatever reason.
Ok, Lopez was more decorated, but he didn’t win squat here lol. My point is CMW is a good hire, not a great one. He’s represented UF well and we can keep dancing, but this dance is getting a bit tiresome. I’d be shocked if SS will replace him tbh.
sorta…. But Muschanp was always a defensive guy. It was his football pedigree. Prior to Florida… White had teams that played wide-open offense and consistently ranked high in scoring, in conference and nationally.
With NIL I don’t know if we will ever compete at the top like we used to which makes being mediocre in these final few years of everyone being “even” even more painful. Oscar T at Kentucky is gonna be a millionaire while in school soon. What’s the most we can do? Give a player 10,000 for a local Sonny’s ad?
I have absolutely no idea. It could theoretically be guys playing too tight or are overthinking. But then again when you see guys standing around dribbling, driving it into the corner (only to be trapped and out of position to initiate offense), constantly having bad spacing, not properly filling lanes on fast breaks, so many “almost” turnovers away from the basket, it makes you wonder since these are all things you wouldn’t want to see 12 year olds doing, let alone high D1 players. Makes you wonder what the heck goes on to keep seeing the same fundamental breakdowns game after game after game. White actually seems to have good X’s and O’s on inbounds plays, when he does call a play from the bench sometimes it’s smart (like today seemed like he wanted to keep feeding Castleton, including calling his number and that was smart). But our “base” offense pretty much seems to be guys standing around dribbling with no off the ball motion. Maybe waiting for a play call to come in to do something?
He did win 2 SEC titles. I was shocked when we got rid of him. I wouldn’t be so surprised if you what with whoever lol
yeah I addressed that a bit in my follow up post. We didn’t get what we were told we were getting from his previous stop. His time at UF has definitely been defense centric as far as focus and coaching aptitude.
FWIW, they seem to be running around and working off of screens a lot more this year. Seems like they were just standing around in the half court offense in previous years.
