Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — He'd had less than five days to process the end of the 2018-19 season and subsequent loss of three seniors, and even less time than that to absorb the defections of three more players. Florida coach Mike White, though, knows the situation he's dealing with could just as soon be playing out at countless programs across the country. 

"Postseason meetings. Everybody is having them with their players," White said Thursday. "It's part of it. It's college basketball." 

In his first remarks since news broke that fourth-year junior forward Keith Stone and sophomore guards Mike Okauru and Deaundrae Ballard were transferring, White took a fairly matter-of-fact approach in explaining how the trio of Gators reached their decisions. Exit meetings invite candid give-and-take between coaches and players relative to their individual play during the just-completed season, as well as their projected roles in the coming one. 

Then decisions are made.  

"You meet with your guys and you forecast the future and certain roles; you have some back-and-forth conversations," White said. "Some guys become very excited about the coming year, some guys look for other opportunities. We wish all these guys the best of luck, whether they decided to continue to be Gators here or move on to look potentially for other opportunities to help with their futures. We're behind all these guys."

All three pitched in at times the last two seasons. In Stone's case, the last three seasons.  

The 6-foot-8, 253-pound Stone started the first 13 games of the season before suffering a season-ending knee injury Jan. 19 at Georgia and undergoing reconstructive surgery about a week later. His numbers from a season ago, when he started 26 games, had taken something of a dip, as he missed all 10 of his shots through UF's first four Southeastern Conference games. Sadly, it was the fifth game — when he went 3-for-4 from the floor, with his first 3-pointer in league play and eight first-half points in arguably his best minutes of the season — that Stone went down early in the second half against the Bulldogs. Stone's rehab figures to take him into December, possibly January, making a debut at this next stop a midseason deal.

  Okauru, a 6-3 guard, saw his minutes cut nearly in half from his time as a freshman when he averaged 3.8 points and 11.1 minutes per game. As a sophomore, he was 1.4 points and 6.6 minutes, though he did appear in all 36 games. The 6-5 Ballard saw his total playing time go up this season — he began the year as a regular rotation player, scoring a career-high 19 in UF's blowout win over Stanford in the Battle 4 Atlantis at the Bahamas — but his minutes went into a steady decline in league play. He totaled just five minutes (with four DNPs) over the team's final 10 games. 

"We shortened our bench there at the end of the year and started playing the ones who were playing the best, both offensively and defensively," White said. "Certain guys win minutes and certain guys don't, that's just part of it. You can't play 13 guys. You've got to play the best ones you think give your team the best chance to be successful."

At year's end, the Gators were basically playing a seven-man rotation, with cameo minutes from an eighth guy in redshirt freshman forward Isaiah Stokes, who was a DNP in two of the last three games.

White and his staff determined the smaller rotation and slower pace of the play was the best chance to be successful. They were right. Florida's best basketball did come late in the season with fewer guys and fewer possessions.

But that's not necessarily what White wants to do with his future UF teams. It's not how he played at Louisiana Tech, not how the Gators played on the way to the Elite Eight two years ago and not how they were playing at the start of last season before a couple teams (namely Florida State and Final Four-bound Loyola Chicago) provided a blueprint of how to defend an offense that lacked offensive punch in the post.  

"We started experimenting in practice and we had to sell it to our guys," White said. "Moving forward, I don't know how we will play next year and I really don't care because I'm open to all styles that give us opportunities. We will see. We will get guys on campus as soon as possible, hopefully by Summer-B and practice it up, evaluate it, skill develop and come out with a plan to see which guys earn the most minutes and we figure out how we are going to play."

With the mass exodus of this week, plus the midseason transfer of forward Chase Johnson to Dayton, the Gators have four scholarship openings to add to the six returning players — including rising sophomores Andrew Nembhard, Keyontae Johnson and Noah Locke — plus an incoming freshman class currently ranked among the top five in the nation, headlined by a pair of McDonald's All-Americans in forward Scottie Lewis, out of New Jersey, and guard Tre Mann, a Gainesville product by way of The Villages. 

When the attrition and addition all shake out, more than half of the Gators' roster in 2019-20 will be comprised of newcomers, which means the leadership and culture in the program also will be in transition. In fact, White's remarks when asked about the coachability of the '18-19 team shed some light on the former.

"Rewarding at the end, but we had our struggles this year. Our culture wasn't as good this year as it was in the previous two years, especially a couple of years ago," White said. "We had some unhappiness in the locker room and on the bench at times. But it's typical."

Yes. It's college basketball in 2019.