Mike White is the second coming of Dan Mullen, Under the direction of White UF's basketball will never be more than average at its best. The question its for how long more UF administration will stand for this, the answer its fire Mike White.
Eh I'll bite. Much more Zook in his failings than Mullen. Zook cared. Zook tried. Zook genuinely didn't know how to find answers. White checks all those issues. Totally different beast than Mullen's fiasco.
I'll add that while I root for every Gator coach I rooted as hard for Zook as a person as I did for White.
This. White isn’t a Zook level recruiter (if he was continually reeling in 5* even he might be able to win a bunch). But certainly he does seem to recruit hard and recruits very competitively, he has had several really strong classes (this years was transfers, but he did hit several highly sought after 5th year transfers). The problem has not been talent from what I can tell. Yet, the on court results always seems several games worse than you’d think is there “on paper”. We always seem to drop those 2-3 extra home games, which is the real killer. We are dropping 6-7 home games every year it seems. I remember pointing out several years back Donovan hadn’t done that since his FIRST year. We had 20 years of not losing a certain # of home games, but White has exceeded that several times in a row (and probably trending that way again). To make a run in the SEC you basically need to run the table at home, and stay above .500 on the road. White badly underperforms at home, and really the only thing keeping him afloat is he always seems to manage the unexpected road win when it seems like things are going down the tubes. When we pulled to within 1 of Auburn, I thought it might be one of those +1 road wins. The problem continues to be we keep showing bad basketball fundamentals, and it doesn’t seem to matter who the players are, what their prior experience is, etc. The offense just devolves into stagnation, bad fast break spacing, turnovers and dribbling into trouble that shouldn’t happen even in midget basketball, it just keeps going back to that. Unlike Zook White doesn’t come off as a doofus, but whatever goes on at practice it just isnt quite working. I hoped he would bring in the “offensive guru” to help him fix this problem, maybe this is where the Mullen comparison is apt. Mullen wouldn’t change the defensive coordinator, White won’t bring in a sort of “offensive coordinator” to at least address some of that.
Disagree. Mullen took us to 3 straight major bowls, games reserved for the best teams in the country. He had us ranked in the final poll every year but this one. MW has only finished ranked once. Mullen had us as one of the top 10-15 teams in the country and even played for the conference championship. White gets us to the second round of the NCAA’s, with almost a guaranteed loss. He’ll get us to the top 32 and that’s it. Mullen is far superior.
This team just does not have any guards that can take care of the ball. Appleby plays his tail off but makes to many turnovers in the process. Jones is not a good ball handler or shooter. Inside Castleton can be really good at times and then can disappear others. They had no gas left in the second half against Bama and played hard against a very good Auburn team. Still a lot of basketball go. I am going to just enjoy the season and worry about who should be the coach and players in the off season. Plenty of time between the end of the season and football season to post about this stuff.
I think you make a good but flawed point, which reveals the basic story on CMW. That is...you left out this season for Mullen. It counts. It happened. Dan had a higher ceiling (though still not SEC championship) but as we now know, a much lower floor than CMW. And that's the book on CMW. He's on average a top-third, top-half of SEC coach.
Florida basketball should at least be a perrenial top 25 team team or close to it. This hasn't been the case since Chiozza graduated. We haven't even been close and that's a clear sign the program is not where it should be. In fact, now we're falling further and further behind in the SEC. Should this season continue the way its been going, than SS has to make a move. How far does Florida have to fall in the SEC until a move has been made? Granted White still has the rest of the season to turn this team around and the LSU game imo very likely may decide the season. Start 0-3 in the SEC and can't see this team recovering. Hard to see this current team being consistent enough to win enough to get back to 500 in the SEC. Even in that scenario and Florida sneaks in again as a 10 seed or First Four team, is that good enough to feel confident in White's direction? This was the year that White needed to show something, but so far its just been more of the same.
I thought that White coached a pretty good game last night. That said, the Georgia and Missouri coaches are the only ones in the SEC that I would rate below White. The SEC has become a coaches conference in basketball, and 2 more really good ones will be added when Texas and Oklahoma join the conference.
Wow that's pretty bad when the Gators have the third worst coach in the league and Missouri just beat Bama so perhaps that spot might be up for grabs. I really hope should this season continue as it's been going that SS's hands are forced and he has to make a move. Should a change be make, I hope the new coach can keep the incoming class, but at some point you can't worry about that and a change is desperately needed.
Please remember that our coach has a challenge in that the coaches at LSU, KY, and Auburn are cheaters so they can bring in players we cannot; Billy Donavan had this challenge. The last 2 schools Calipari coached before coming to UK went on probation. The administrations and fans at these schools don't care they are cheats. I hope we are better than that and I think our coach is a class act and a credit to UF. Stop we these infantile fire the coach posts.
I agree that it's not fair to compare White vs these teams, but what about Bama, Tennessee, and Arkansas (struggling this year but went to the Elite 8 last year). With all due respect, it's great that White runs a clean program but so do other coaches in the SEC, but at a significantly higher level. Being a great guy isn't a reason to keep a coach.
Stop with the “other coaches cheat to win and we don’t” stuff. Not saying they are squeaky clean but Calipari has been at Kentucky for quite a while and hasn’t had any violations that I’m aware of. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that you can hire a coach that can run a successful program and play within the rules. White runs a clean program for all we know but he just can’t seem to put together a team that can get the job done on the court. I’d love to see White move on somewhere and be happy with whatever he chooses in life but a head basketball coach doesn’t seem like the right career for him, especially at this level.
With nil all the cheating talk seems like a moot point now... we need to get nil going good for bb, a couple studs would make a huge difference
Does this LSU gymnast have a shot at making some NIL money? Google Image Result for https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.com/content/uploads/2021/09/931/523/Olivia-Dunne4.jpg?ve=1&tl=1
Beginning next season, every Univ of Texas offensive lineman will get $50,000 of NIL payments per season. I am guessing that Texas is going to have some really good offensive lines in the near future.
