Noise from Mike White’s camp

I think you are imagining it happens to Mike White more than other UF coaches not named Billy Donovan. Let’s not make Mike White a pariah for not being equal to one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time. I think he’s learned, personally.

 

You mischaracterized my position in your first response so you could knock down a strawman, and now you've lashed out at me personally for purportedly obsessing over ORU, a topic I didn't even bring up. These are tried and true, but ultimately transparent, attempts to distract when your position on the merits is weak.

I don't think you brought up ORU either. Nonetheless, you wrote a post defending the loss and suggesting that White didn't blow the lead and game with his ill-conceived strategy down the stretch. I disagree wholeheartedly with what you wrote, so I responded with my own opinion to the contrary. That's not obsessing. It's engaging in a debate on a message board designed for just such a purpose.

By the way, I lean slightly toward retaining White, although I won't lose any sleep if we let him go. So I believe I'm more on your side of the overarching debate. But he's not perfect. And he erred against ORU, massively, in my opinion.

 

I lashed out at you personally? What? When? How?

 

If you take out White's best year and worst year at UF his teams records are like a 6-5 football record. If you add his best and worst records back into the mix, the records are like a 7-4 football record. It's been seven years. If it were football, would a 7-4 record on average be acceptable at the University of Florida? We've fired football coaches that averaged 8 wins a year.

 

Mike White just plain out blew that game by essentially going into a prevent type of strategy. Doesn't work that great in football, and surely didn't work against Oral Roberts. That was definitely a game where he should've put the pedal to the metal.

 

Being on average 30-50th in the country, with only 1 season above that is not good enough.

 

I’m purportedly “obsessing” is an argument against me personally as the speaker, not an argument on the underlying merits.

“Lashed” was a bit of an overstatement on my part, however. Sorry.

 

It was a tough one. I was hoping the FSU win would have been gold but…

 

Football and Basketball are two separate entities at UF !! Way different expectations. We can be a blue blood in football. Basketball we will never be a blue blood. Even with BD the passion and love of Gator bball was average at best. Football can get back there but never compare the two programs. Apples and Oranges.

 

I wasn’t talking about you specifically, but people who won’t just let it go in general. I disagree that the using the word “obsessing” is anything close to a personal attack in any shape, form, or fashion. But, in the spirit of remaining cordial, I apologize if anything seemed personal. It certainly wasn’t my intent.

 

Never claimed we were a blue blood in basketball, but feeling we should be better than a 6-5/7-4 football record after 7 years is far from unreasonable. I like Mike White. I have nothing against him as a person, but we're not paying him 3 million a year to be average.

 

I prefer peaches.

 

So you ARE a UGA fan! ............ kidding, kidding..........

 

The blue blood concept is meaningless. Florida’s football program was average before Spurrier. Florida’s basketball program was average before Donovan. St. John’s was one of the 4 winningest programs in college basketball history through the end of the Carnesecca era. Indiana through Knight. Look at Gonzaga in hoops. What happened to Army and Navy in football. How about those Carlisle Indians? What’s happened to FSU and Miami in football? Florida had the resources to excel in all sports.

 

We should be competing for SEC titles. We should be consistent top 25. Those aren’t blue blood expectations.

 

Even last night, it took until Vandy was 12-22 from 3 before he tried anything different defensively and by then we were down 9 and it took a near miracle comeback to pull it out. His in game coaching is just not good, and he makes the same mistakes game after game year after year - reluctance to call timeouts, baffling personnel decisions, taking the air out too early, and lack of adjustments, especially defensively when his base defense doesn’t work. It’s like he rolls out the ball and says “if you can beat this, then good on you”.
Offensively I called for an inside out game from the first week of the season, it took him 25 games to get there, and now magically we can shoot threes. Funny how that works.
He’s just incredibly stubborn on his systems until it’s do or die.

 

At the end of Donovan's tenure there were sportswriters talking about what Florida had to do to become a blue blood, it was really as simple as continuing what Donovan built. If another coach could come in and win a championship in the next five years, we legitimately would have been in the discussion as a blue blood. That isn't what happened, but we were right on the cusp. And now we're not.

 

Last night, it was Stackhouse’s coaching that lost the game for Vandy. Instead of going with the offense that got Vandy a nice lead, he slowed things to a crawl, used up most of the shot clock and then tried to force things with the shot clock winding down. It didn’t work. He has done the same thing in several close games this season. Folks, believe it or not, White out coached Stackhouse last night. White is at his best when desperation sets in.

 

the last sentence I completely agree with. He damn near came back and beat TT a few years ago playing zone most of the second half, which is unheard of for him. When he lost Key last year he revamped the offense.
What drives me crazy is that it takes that level of desperation to get there. So many games could be won if we only had that level of risk tolerance in our adjustments all the rest of the year. We wouldn’t be in this bubble mess every season.

 

Technically incorrect.
We did not win an NCAA Tournament game in 2020, nor even make the tournament. No one did.