Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Under Coach Mike White, Florida basketball practices have always included transition offensive drills and exhausting 5-on-4 1/2 defensive drills. During White's five seasons, the Gators have done their share of racing the ball up the floor on offense and lining up in full-court pressure defense. His teams also have run sprints, be it during practice or in conditioning sessions. 

This season, though, they're doing those things more. 

A lot more. 

"They let us know from the jump that this year was going to be different," sophomore guard Tre Mann said. "Everybody liked hearing that."

The team's first Zoom meeting was back in April. By that time, the UF coaching staff had staged a handful of Zooms and made the collective decision that the 2020-21 UF team, one that figured to be far more athletic than the last several squads, would return to White's Louisiana Tech roots and go to a 94-foot, high-tempo style of basketball and thus ditch a methodical, deliberate version that ranked among the slowest in the country the last two seasons. A year ago, in an effort to utilize the best traits of low-post grad-transfer Kerry Blackshear Jr. and point guard Andrew Nembhard, UF played to a pace that ranked 326th out of the nation's 359 teams. Both Blackshear and Nembhard are gone. The season before, when Nembhard was a five-star freshman, that number was 344. 

Now contrast that to White's four seasons at La Tech, when the Bulldogs averaged 39th in tempo nationally, including 16th in 2014. Those are the kinds of numbers he wants for the Gators.

"With the level of athleticism and speed and quickness, I think there's a chance we get better at attacking the rim, putting more pressure on the rim, drawing more fouls and being better in the open floor. We haven't had many easy baskets the last two years, and I think that goes hand in hand with our ability to extend our defense, to get us out in the open floor; and we've got to convert," White said. "Defensively, we're going to press. We're going to pressure. How much will depend on how good we get at it and how committed we are. Pressing is hard. It's hard mentally and it's hard physically. We're pressing a lot right now. We've pressed a lot in the last [week]. How effective it will be early season, mid-season, we'll see." 

CHARTING THE GATORS 
A look at how Coach Mike White's teams at Louisiana Tech (four seasons) and Florida (five) have fared against the nation's other 350 Division I programs in adjusted tempo (aka pace of play), per KenPom.com advanced metrics. 

Season	Team	Record (postseason)	Tempo rank	Possessions per 40 mins	The buzz
2011-12	La Tech	18-16 (none)	71st	67.2	White's first season as a head coach after 7 seasons as an assistant at Ole Miss.
2012-13	La Tech	27-7 (NIT)	25th	68.7	Offense ranked 39th in time of possession; defense ranked 35th in efficiency.
2013-14	La Tech	29-8 (NIT)	16th	69.6	Sixth nationally in steal percentage.
2014-15	La Tech	27-9 (NIT)	44th	67.4	Finished Top 20 in turnovers on offense and defense.
2015-16	Florida	21-15 (NIT)	110th	69.2	Defense ranked 14th nationally, only co-league champ Texas A&M was better in SEC.
2016-17	Florida	27-9 (NCAA/Elite 8)	117th	69.0	Ranked 25th in overall offense, 5th in defense, even after losing elite rim-protecting center John Egbunu to season-ending knee injury.
2017-18	Florida	21-13 (NCAA/32)	226th	67.1	Led by arguably the fastest PG in the nation in Chris Chiozza, Gators' all-time assists leader.
2018-19	Florida	20-16 (NCAA/32)	344th	62.9	Virginia, which won NCAA title, was the lone power conference program to play slower.
2019-20	Florida	19-12 (COVID)	326th	64.9	Pace was 13th in SEC, ahead of only A&M (334th), but defense ranked No. 4 in league.

Indeed, learning to play in transition requires a transition all to itself; one that the team is dealing with more than a week into the official start of preseason practices. It also requires, as White referenced, an uncompromising commitment on both ends of the floor.  

Can't play fast unless all five players on the floor are going full bore on offense and defense.

"The way we're playing now is the way our team played in high school," said sophomore wing Scottie Lewis, who just as well could have been speaking for most of his current teammates. "Last year, with our personnel, some of the plus-minus statistics and our style of play, we didn't run very much. This year, Coach says he's going to entrust guys to bust out — obviously, not our 4s and 5s — but our guards and crash guys [from the wing] are going to be able to get the ball and go. We want to play fast. We don't want to run a lot of sets."

The UF coaches have told their players they want chaos (organized, of course) without being chaotic. They want to be speedy, but not sloppy.

On offense, that means valuing the basketball. A team that plays fast and turns the ball over a bunch isn't going to play fast very long. 

"Assist-to-turnover ratio is the biggest thing for us, right now," sophomore point guard Ques Glover. "Every day there's an emphasis on it." 

Turnovers at practice are penalized with sprints and burpees after each mini-scrimmage. White has told his players this will be the routine into the regular season, as well. 

The goal, of course, is to be playing fast deep into the regular season. 

"We've been here before," White said. 

Rewind to the start of the 2017-18 season, when the Gators, coming off a run to the Elite Eight the previous March, opened the campaign ranked eighth in the country. Five games in, with speedster Chris Chiozza at the point, UF was averaging 102.6 points per game, shooting 47 percent from 3, and playing at a positively breakneck pace, highlighted by a pulsating 111-105 double-overtime upset of No. 17 Gonzaga in the semifinals of the PK80 Invitational at Portland. UF led No. 1-ranked Duke by 18 in the second half of th PK80 title game when the Blue Devils threw a monkey wrench in the Gators' game plan. Not just for that game, but for the rest of the season. 

On offense, Duke and its stable of lottery picks slowed down on offense and grinded UF in the halfcourt. On defense, the Blue Devils extended, which took time off the shot clock and resulted in the Gators playing slower than they'd like. Florida got flustered on that end. On the other end, the Gators weren't sound enough or, frankly, committed enough to speed their opponents up on defense. 

A blueprint was out there. 

Duke came back to win. The next game, Florida State came to UF with its trademark, lockdown defense, got into the Gators' collective jerseys and won an 83-66 decision. Two nights later, the Gators scored just 59 points and fell to Loyola-Chicago (yes, the eventual Final Four-bound team), which mimicked the Seminoles' plan (that copied the Duke plan) and added to the Florida frustration. From there, the best and most athletic defensive teams gave the Gators the most trouble the rest of the year by collapsing on Chiozza and extending the defense to force more half-court action. 

Fast forward three years. The '20-21 Gators are as athletic as they've been in years, with speed to burn. The coaches hope this bunch is wired differently when it comes to want-to on defense and, just as key, effort on the glass. 

Assuming those things materialize, UF will be clearing boards and — rather than looking for one guy (Nembhard the last two seasons) to take the ball up and initiate the offense — busting out, with maybe a half-dozen guys, in time, earning the trust of the coaches to have that green light to take off and get the Gators on the run. 

"Get it and let's go!" said fourth-year junior point guard Tyree Appleby, who sat out last season after transferring from Cleveland State. "I love it." 

They all do.  "The coaches are doing a great job using more guys who can create their own space off the dribble and who can crash, so we can get multiple chances at second shots," said junior Keyontae Johnson, who after coming off a first-team All-Southeastern Conference season playing forward will get a bunch of turns at the off-guard spot — given his strengths as a downhill, hard-driver — in the new system. "I feel like Coach is showing more confidence with the team as far as guys getting open in transition. He definitely wants to play faster this year, so we're just trying to do everything we can to figure this out."

They've got plenty of time, what with the "Bubbleville" neutral-site Nov. 25 season opener against Maine at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut more than a month away. Two nights later, though, Florida gets reigning national champion Virginia, renowned for its defense and walk-it-up pace of play, on the same floor. 

That'll be quite the early test of wills for a team that wants to play fast. 

Actually, the transition to this kind of a transition has become a daily test unto itself at practice.

"Our defensive energy and intensity and competitiveness has been very, very good, but we got to execute some stuff a lot better and we have to clean up a lot of mistakes," White said. "Offensively, if you're going to play fast, you've got to slow down mentally. We've got to value the ball at a higher level. If we're going to be a pressure team and play with a ton of energy when we get the basketball, we've got to calm down. We're not in a very good place with that right now. But we still got five more weeks."