Mike White pushed a lot of the right buttons with UF's players during his 2017 SEC Coach of the Year season.
Transition Game: White, Gators Found Balance in Year 2
Friday, March 10, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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The 2017 SEC Coach of the Year struck the right balance with his players in his second Gators season.
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jalen Hudson is a talented offensive player who eventually will score a lot of points for the University of Florida basketball team. He is sitting out the season, per NCAA rules, after transferring from Virginia Tech. Hudson, though, practices daily, lifts weights with his teammates and takes part in all squad activities outside of traveling to road games.
That includes team meetings. Individual ones, also.
Earlier this week, Hudson stopped into Mike White's office for a visit with the UF head coach and a couple assistants to review tape from practice.
"You're going to be mad at me next year, J, when I'm only playing you 20 minutes a game," White told him.
Hudson left Tech because he was only playing 20 minutes per game, so this statement caught his attention.
"Why, Coach?"
White went on, motioning to the big-screen TV where clips of practice the day before showed Hudson's effort on the defensive end not up to the standard the coaches have demanded; in Hudson's case, have demanded frequently. Now Hudson was seeing clearly those points of emphasis despite being eight months from pulling on a Florida uniform.
"I know you can get a bucket any time you want, and that's good," White said. "That's why you're going to play 20 minutes a game. That's half the game. We'll have you out there for offense, but when we need defense you'll be on the bench with us. You're a special teams player."
Hudson nodded.
The next day, Hudson had one of his better defensive practices of the season. That same day, White was named the 2017 Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year.
Coincidence? Hardly.
"The thing that makes you Coach of the Year isn't the X's and O's," UF assistant Darris Nichols said. "It's the guys believing in what you're saying."
And therein lies the major difference between White's first Florida team -- the inconsistent 2015-16 version that won 18 regular-season and went to the NIT -- and this second one, the '16-17 squad that will take on seventh-seeded Vanderbilt (18-14) OR 10th-seeded Texas A&M (17-4) Friday night in the second round of the SEC Tournament at Bridgestone Arena and will be in the NCAA Tournament next week for the first time in three years.
When White arrived in Gainesville as the successor to future Hall-of-Famer Billy Donovan, no one on the roster he inherited knew boo about the guy. OK, so he'd won some league championships at Louisiana Tech, capturing regular-season crowns in the Western Athletic and Conference USA, but White had never coached in an NCAA Tournament and, along with his staff, had zero history or relationship with anyone in the program.
His first UF season was a ride of inconsistency. The Gators were not a good offensive team and were sporadically sound on defense.
In Year 2 under White, the Gators are greatly improved on offense and one of the top defensive efficiency teams in the country. They've done so with starting lineups made up of players who were all on the team last season.
Ask the Florida players to compare this season to last and a word that invariably comes up is "trust." It took some time for a roster of players (all but one) who signed up to play for Donovan to get completely on board with White and his ways.
"Any time you meet someone new, you're not going to just open up to them and tell them your life story," junior guard Chris Chiozza said. "You have to develop relationships. You have to develop trust. That doesn't happen right away."
There was also one overriding factor that trumped everything else
"He was the coach," senior point guard Kasey Hill said. "It wasn't up to him to adjust to us. We had to adjust to him"
White has a different recollection, though. The adjustment, he admits, went both ways.
At LaTech, White had a different kind of student-athlete. As a mid-major program, the Bulldogs weren't getting elite-level players who'd spent their youth playing on the high-end AAU circuit. UF assistant Jordan Mincy put it this way: "We had some guys who were a little rough around the edges."
But White could go at them and they'd respond.
Donovan, of course, was notorious for going at his teams hard, but similar tactics from a new coach in a transition year — and both White and his assistants had some very loud moments in their first season — weren't received the same way.
But over a season, then a second offseason, White got to know much more about his players, both as athletes and people. Now, for example, he requires each of them to stop by the office daily to check in with a coach. Sometimes just to chat, other times for feedback and film.
"I do think we've tried to coach from a more positive standpoint this year," White said. "The more time you spend with a group, you find out which buttons you can press and when you can press them. Getting there is kind of like the chicken and the egg. But it's definitely a lot easier to coach from a positive side when they're more receptive and more bought-in."
When Mike White scaled back some things with his offense, point guard Kasey Hill's production made a jump.
Late last season, White made some philosophical decisions relative to what the Gators were doing on the court. He scaled back some things offensively and also backed off his preference for pressing on defense the entire game. The Gators played better and the same approach was rolled into the second season from the outset.
"We trusted the process," Robinson said. "When we figured some things out about each other, it was easier for us to buy what he was selling."
In a more free-flowing system, UF played a lot better at times, especially Hill, whose trust in White took a major step forward.
Once Hill, the leader on the floor and in the locker room, was completely in the fold, the rest sort of fell in line.
"I never really saw Coach White as a negative coach. He got on us when he needed to — and we definitely deserved it some last year — but really hasn't had to do that this year," Hill said. "We've also won, which has made the chemistry better. It's really just buying in."
CHARTING THE GATORS
If UF coach Mike White wins two more games this season, he'll have more wins in his first two seasons than any non-Kentucky coach in SEC history.
Much was made of the impromptu, two-hour team meeting that followed a home loss Jan. 21 to Vanderbilt. There was some air-clearing, to be sure, and some real talk about what had to be do as far as a recommitment to defense. The connected Gators took the words to heart. From there, UF went on a nine-game winning streak that took the season to the next level.
Must have been some meeting, eh?
"It was pretty much a lot of the same stuff we talked about all last year," Chiozza said.
Only this year, the Gators listened. That's what buy-in does.
When Florida defeated South Carolina on Feb. 21, Gamecocks coach Frank Martin praised the Gators, saying they were now playing the game "through the eyes" of their coach. That, Martin said, did not happen last year. It was an illuminating observation.
That's because White has a vision for his program and it's coming into focus.
"I like when people watch us play and talk about how hard we play. We control that," White said. "I want to be a basketball team — not just this year, but every year — that plays the right way; that has a selfless culture, is good defensively, tough, disciplined and accountable."
On Tuesday, the team's final practice before leaving for the SEC Tournament, the Gators were beyond sloppy taking care of the ball. Things got so bad that White stopped practice, did about a minute rant on turnovers and announced that practice would be stopped each time a player committed a turnover and the entire team would run a down-and-back.
There were more turnovers. Lots of them.
Lots of running, too.
Afterward, when the prayer and post-practice shooting was done, the team was dismissed and told to be on the bus to the airport in an hour. White walked off the court and took a seat on the sidelines to go over some notes.
Hudson, unable to make the trip per those NCAA rules, came over and gave White a goodbye hug.
