Noise from Mike White’s camp

And 2-6 vs AP ranked teams is a killer too.

 

So White is similar to Zook who followed after Spurrier? Does that mean we should have kept Zook as our coach and not hired Meyer? Zook wasn’t that bad, was he? But I doubt we would have won those two additional football championships if we had kept Zook.

The question becomes are we ok with being an average/slightly above average basketball team, or do we want to take a shot at becoming excellent/great again. Prior to Billy, this level of play would have been acceptable. However, the bar has been raised, so being average/slightly above average shouldn’t cut it anymore.

 

Oh is that all?? Just continue what a HOF coach did over 19 years. Win a NC in 5 years. Seems pretty simple now.

I wonder if Foley explained this to CMW. He should have just asked him to win a championship.

 

If there was a dictionary entry for "doing enough to not get fired", Mike White would be the poster boy.

If you base your judgement on simply making the tournament and getting past the first round, he's done well.

If you base your judgement on competing for championships of any kind, he's done terribly

If you base your judgement on running a program "the right way" (ie not getting into trouble) he's done well.

If you base your judgement on having his team safely inside the bubble on a regular basis, he's done terribly.

If you think UF basketball is living up to its full potential by annually finishing in the middle of the pack in the SEC and sneaking into the tournament, he's done well.

If you think that after a 7 year tenure, a UF basketball coach should be doing better than that....

...and on and on.

But I'll tell you one thing for sure: No blue blood, basketball school, superior program or whatever is beating down the door to hire Mike White.

 

Vandy hit a lot of last-second-in-the-shot-clock shots all night. Some of them ridiculously difficult shots that went in. That helped them score as many points as they did. It just turned out that they didn't hit those shots toward the end.

And maybe some credit should go to the Gators switching defenses several times on Vandy and that making Vandy get confused on offense, using up a lot of clock, and forcing bad shots that miss with the shot clock running out.

 

I know that Urban Meyer won two natties and did not get us in trouble, but there are a number of things about the way he ran the program that trouble me greatly.

I was glad to see him "retire".

 

Urban is a program builder, but he's not a program sustainer. I think he maxed out at every job he had. I was sorry at the time that he left, but since hindsight is 20/20, I'm glad he left when he did.

 

I will add that Zook was one of the best recruiters in the nation at that time. I'm not convinced he would not have eventually one a Natty with talent alone. The class he was putting together before being fired was just nasty.

 

Whoosh.

My concerns are elsewhere.

 

It always perplexes me when people treat shooting percentage over more than 1,000 shots as if it is a condition based on random chance and not a function of the talent of players combined with the skill of the system to get them the proper shots.

If we made the Sweet 16, that wouldn't be "same ole White." He has only done that once.

 

Well he did make the Regional Finals in 2017 and lost one possessions games in 2018 and 2021 to advance to the Sweet 16. In 2020 there was no tournament so no chance at it. So he was damn close to Sweet 16 the in two recent tournaments. I admit in 2019 the Gators lost badly to Michigan, but that Michigan team was very good.

 

This is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades. He has made the Sweet 16 once.

 

Close also counts in dancing.

Except not in March Dancing, I guess.

 

We're a FOOTBALL school, you shouldn't compare the 2 sports as they are not comparable.

 

Hogwash.

 

Almost 20 years of Billy Donovan and a lot of banners says different. And that is kind of the point. There is absolutely no reason that we should not at least attempt to build on Billy's success, which I and many others do not think we are doing. We do not have to make blue blood status to still be considered a basketball school.

 

Technically a true statement, but it was really the Elite 8.

 

We are still away from on the “cusp”

 

We are where we should be , nothing more or nothing less