For Mike White and a young Florida team, inconsistency the only constant in 2020
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Florida entered the 2019-2020 basketball season with dreams of a season to remember, a top 10 ranking and what on paper appeared to be a roster with enough talent to capture the program’s first SEC championship since 2014 and make a deep run in March.
Instead, at the end of what can only be called a disappointing 19-12 regular season, capped by Saturday’s epic 2nd-half collapse in a stunning loss to No. 6 Kentucky, the Gators find themselves a team — and a program — mired in uncertainty.
In fact, the only thing that seems consistent about this Florida basketball program at present is that it is inconsistent.
You truly never know what version of Florida you’re going to get.
The Gators aren’t consistent on offense, despite the fact that the program ranks 27th in KenPom offensive efficiency, the highest-rating on offense for a Mike White team since his 2nd season, when the Gators reached the Elite 8. Despite better metrics, the team is still prone to extended scoring droughts, lacking the go-to scorer most elite college teams have who can find points when sets aren’t working and most shots aren’t falling. Florida has tried to find the go-to guy, with Andrew Nembhard, Kerry Blackshear Jr. and Keyontae Johnson all getting their fair share of chances. But beyond Johnson, there’s been little in the way of a consistent answer in crunch time.
The Gators aren’t consistent on defense, a development that has offset the team’s better offense in 2019-2020. Elite defense has been a staple of the Florida program under White, with the Gators finishing with a Top 25 KenPom defense in each of White’s first 4 seasons. This season the Gators rank 61st in defensive efficiency rating (entering Tuesday), and have spent time even lower during the season, struggling mightily with defending the pick and roll and protecting the rim.
Florida’s defense appeared to improve over the last month, with the staff’s move to more drop pick-and-roll coverages (instead of blitzing ball screens) and the use of a 3-2 zone pacing outstanding defensive performances against the likes of LSU, Texas A&M and Georgia. These defensive adjustments generated more missed shots as well as additional turnovers, helping Florida generate some easy transition opportunities to offset moments where the halfcourt offense went stagnant.
Saturday against Kentucky, however, the adjustments backfired. Up 12 with 10 minutes to go, White again went to the 3-2 zone. Kentucky scored on 11 of its next 12 possessions, mostly pounding the ball inside (where there were 2) to likely SEC Player of the Year Nick Richards, who feasted against Florida’s youthful bigs, playing in the stead of the injured Blackshear.
Why White didn’t switch back to man defense is a mystery nearly as enigmatic as this team, which can look good enough to beat Auburn by 25 or lead a red-hot Kentucky team by 18, but play badly enough to get run out of the gym by a bad Missouri team or fall behind by 20 to a bottom-feeding Georgia.
Florida’s players didn’t want to blame their staff for the Kentucky collapse.
“They ran the same set every time,” Scottie Lewis, the 5-star McDonald’s All-American who was brilliant against the Cats and appears, finally, to be hitting his stride, told the media after the game. “Coach White told us what to do and how to defend it. If you want to be a high-level basketball player, you have to execute what you are told. We didn’t.”
The problem with this Florida team is just that. It’s not just that you don’t know what you’ll get from night to night. You don’t know what you’ll get from half to half. There are shades of brilliance and then there’s the team that has blown a second half of more than 2 possessions in 6 of its 12 losses and a lead of 8 or more 6 times as well.
“Maybe that is just what our identity is,” White said earlier this season, after a different confounding defeat (a stinker at Ole Miss that at the time was Florida’s 4th loss in 6 games). “We’re only consistent at being inconsistent. That’s about buy-in and edge and toughness and that starts with me.”
It does start with White, who was quick to point that out again Saturday, after Florida’s Senior Day collapse. A victory over Kentucky not only would have given the Gators a precious bye and 2-seed this week at the SEC Tournament in Nashville, but it likely would have moved the Gators up a seed line or 2 and pushed them well off the dreaded 8-9 line in the NCAA Tournament in 2 weeks.
Instead, they head to Nashville with no more time to figure it out and with one of their star players questionable with a sprained wrist.
There’s not any question Florida has the talent to win in Nashville.
“They are an NCAA Tournament team, and one that likely will advance,” John Calipari said Saturday.
He’s right. But he’d also have been right if he said Florida could go to Nashville and lose Thursday to the winner of the 12-13 Georgia-Ole Miss game. We know this because the Gators have already trailed Georgia by 20 this season and been blown out by Ole Miss. It’s not just hot take speculation.
“Championship-level teams can go on a scoring droughts and not have a drop-off defensively; and they can make 8 straight shots and not have a drop-off defensively,” White said. “My team doesn’t have that and it starts with me. I haven’t found out how to get that done with this team.”
White does need to figure it out. But with this team, he’s running out of time.
Will White get a 6th season in Gainesville to figure it out and try to find consistency, a hallmark of Billy Donovan’s program in Gainesville?
SDS spoke to multiple people with UF this week who would be stunned if White didn’t return next year, regardless of what happens in March. It’s not just the huge buyout and recent extension he received from Scott Stricklin. It’s also that for all the struggles, the program appears well-situated to advance to the NCAA Tournament. The wheels haven’t even come close to coming off.
In a vacuum, keeping White makes sense. White is 1 win from becoming only the 2nd UF coach to win 20 games or more in 5 consecutive seasons (Donovan) and he’s won more NCAA Tournament games in his tenure than any SEC coach other than John Calipari. That he has stayed above the fray of scandal at a tough time for the sport off the floor is also worth remembering. But program health is about trendlines, and the Gators, after a three seasons of progress and quality wins, have looked more ordinary over the last two seasons, including this year, with the best talent on campus since the 2014 Final Four team. A loud group of fans and boosters have grown increasingly restless, and the silent majority supporting White is shrinking.
What would change that is consistency.
It just might be too late to find it this season.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
