Good: Represented UF with class and his players never got in trouble Bad: He had MUSCHAMP LUCK!! Ive said it a thousad times but the guy had injuries to impact players literally every single year. My goodness Frustration: His offense which lead to unexplained losses. I know I was only suppose to say the good and bad but the frustration part was the difference for me because that's what held White back from being average to elite. Sigh
Good: good person Bad: an average basketball coach, failure to recruit or develop shooters, no definitive style of play offensively or defensively, every year seems like a new beginning with very little growth from previous seasons, extremely inconsistent from game to game performances. We can beat anyone, but also lose to anyone on any given night.
Call it whatever you want to but some people are born into riches with stable homes and some are born into single parents with literally nothing. I know we all have an opportunity to overcome our circumstances but whatever it is, some people are just given a harder hand at life than others.
Not much to add to what has already been said. Will always be thankful that he was here when Key went down. Don’t know if that situation could have been handled any better by anyone else. Never understood how we could look so good and then so inept within the same game.
I generally liked Coach White; think he understands the game. I just don’t think giving him a year or two additional would amount to much more than recent history. I do wish him well. Two things come to mind for me as negatives; 1. He always seemed to be short in key positions; this year - point guard, previous years - forwards that can shoot. In my view, we have not had many tall guys that run the court and can shoot (players today don’t want to play slow halfcourt basketball. 2. That loss to Oral Roberts in last years tourney sticks in my crawl; I’ll never understand why we let the foot off the gas. I’d like to think our coach has a better feel for the game to mash a team you are killing rather than slow it down.
While I am in the camp of people that thinks Gator fans are too quick to turn on our coaches and bash them on the internet, I don't feel that we were unfair to White. I didn't expect multiple championships, but I did expect at least one--even if it was just the SEC. Winning Natties is hard to do. I also didn't expect to go 1-6 against FSU. Then there was the wild inconsistency and inexplicable losses to bad teams, which went on for 7 years. And last time I checked, UF didn't fire White. He left on his own accord.
Good: Never worried about violations and seemed classy. Bad: First - and this is largely ignored by MW supporters - the guy left the team before the end of the season. Bailed. Not like UGA needed him right away. He QUIT on this team before their last game for NO reason. It was bush league and it very much surprises me coming from White. Second, the guy had 8 years to "keep the momentum Donovan built" as he proclaimed when hired. Well, fan apathy is high, team is averaging about 4-5th in the SEC, and we have not threatened to win the sec or the tourney. The brand of ball is boring and the team is SO inconsistent (lost to UGA this year? Really?). Firing him is arguable (I'm glad we are moving on but get folks who found him acceptable) but he quit... before the season ended.
Good: Very nice and ethical person Bad: Failure to make the necessary changes to bring the program to the next level. For some reason the program went in reverse then stayed stuck in neutral after that Elite 8 season.
It also kind of makes you wonder how long he was in discussions with Georgia. Was his focus split between dealing with Georgia and trying to win games down the stretch to reach the NCAA tournament?
I don't know that he was a poor teacher as much as that he didn't have the right collection of players. We only have one PG on this year's team and he would would be great on a team like Cleveland State. He recruited Nemhard to be on a fast paced team, wrong. This team doesn't seem to have a high basketball IQ, how much teaching can they absorb?
He quit because as my “insider” told me who used to talk to Foley weekly and is still a Bullgator said “White was getting fired”. I’m sure his AD family made some calls and hooked him up with UGa to avoid the deserved termination. If White doesn’t win at UGa, those fans make ours seem like sweethearts. So, blaming it on “I’m a family man first” is complete BS.
He could have left to take the uga job after our final game. To save $1M plus stricklin would not have fired him but thanked him as he left - after our last game. Final word is he quit on the team before the end of the season when he could have quit after the last game. Left his team for no good reason other than maybe he was scared uga would go another way if he didn’t hop on that job fast. And that tells you something too…
That is on the coach for bringing in those players, as the coach recruited those players he couldn’t teach. It is also on the coach to find players that fit his system, or if it is that hard to find players who can consistently execute his system, to change his system to something else that his players can consistently execute and he can easily find players to execute. Nebhardt plays on a fast paced team now, so I am not sure that it is correct that Nebhardt can’t play fast. White seemed to artificially slow down the offense at times to run clock. But for the offense White wanted to run, Nebhardt was not a good fit. The DDO is great when you have superior athletes, but I don’t think we ever had those. Even UK with their talent can’t consistently make the DDO work.
You hate to see good guys fail, but that's just what happened to Mike... He's a class act and a good man that did things the right way. He's the kind of man you root for. Wish him all the luck in the world until... the Gators.
