After last year’s uninspiring 13-17 record — the worst in Amanda Butler’s tenure as head coach — the UF women’s basketball program needed a change.
Normally when a program is struggling, that change comes in the form of a new head coach, as Florida fans know all too well with the fate of former head football coach Will Muschamp.
But before Muschamp was axed during last season, a season after finishing with a 4-8 record, he was given a chance to prove himself.
Instead of canning him, Florida instead looked to his supporting cast. UF fired then-offensive coordinator Brent Pease and hired Duke’s Kurt Roper, because the problem seemed to be primarily a sputtering offense.
When that only led to further disappointment, removing Muschamp was the next step.
Butler is under less pressure, because while the teams she has coached have never been overachievers up to this point in her tenure, they’ve also never been as bad as last season.
So, like with Brent Pease, the Gators looked to assistant coaches to get the program back on track by bringing in two major new faces.
First is Bill Ferrara, who coaches guards, and then there’s Shimmy Gray-Miller, who coaches the post players with tenured assistant coach Murriel Page.
While both of them are, in all likelihood, adept at coaching their respective position groups, they are perhaps most poised to make their impact on the recruiting trail.
This year, the Gators have five seniors or redshirt seniors on the roster. Therefore, replenishing the talent pool will be crucial to Florida finding success beyond this season.
The responsibility to fill up the roster should fall largely on the shoulders of Gray-Miller, who is the team’s recruiting coordinator. However, she said that even though she is technically the team’s top recruiter, all four coaches are unusually skilled in that area.
"It’s a little different than anywhere I’ve ever worked because you’ve got three assistants and a head coach who are all great recruiters," she said.
"(Murriel) Page was the acting recruiting coordinator before I got here, Butler’s been a recruiting coordinator when she was an assistant, Bill (Ferrara) has been a recruiting coordinator, so we all came here with our own areas."
According to Ferrara, one thing that sets Florida apart is that it doesn’t stop recruiting players once they commit — in fact, their communications only intensify.
"Every single day," he said in response to how often the coaching staff talks to committed players.
Stealing from Pete Carroll’s philosophy, Ferrara said that as a coach, you start coaching players once they commit rather than when they arrive on campus.
"Every single day, all of us will be reaching out to them about different things. It could be serious, something as serious as you’ve got to get your application in. … It’s really exciting for me to get a chance to start coaching them now before they sign," Ferrara said.
While the class of 2016 will likely bring in some future contributors, only nearby Baker County standout Delicia Washington is rated as a top-100 recruit by espnW.
The 2017 class, however, currently features three players in the top 100. That could be a real program changer for Florida, which isn’t a traditional recruiting powerhouse in women’s basketball.
The top-rated player in UF’s 2017 class is Karissa McLaughlin, who is the 11th rated point guard in the cycle. She said that UF’s coaches separated themselves from the pack by focusing on her development as a whole.
"They were just so welcoming to me. You could tell that they were recruiting me for the right reasons — not only as a basketball player, but as a person," she said.
"I knew the coaches and the players were the people who I wanted to surround myself with so that when I leave college I’ll be the best person I could possibly be."
Sherri Anthony, who coaches 2016 commit Sydney Searcy, said that even as an outsider looking in on how the Florida coaching staff recruited Searcy, they still made a good impression.
"They were very good about everything," she said.
"I could not have asked for better mentoring, courting, however you wanna put it, recruiting from all the coaches. They were very, very kind to her, they obviously followed all the regulations, explained all the regulations to me, explained the regulations to her parents."
It seems that the coaching changes that have been made have already helped greatly on the recruiting front, but only time will tell if the changes will translate to on-court success.
With that in mind, it’s important to remember that the Gator fan base is typically impatient with losing teams. However, barring an unheard of meltdown this season, it’s likely that this coaching staff will get a chance to bring in recruits and prove that last season was only an outlier.
Follow Ethan Bauer on Twitter @ebaueri
UF women's basketball coach Amanda Butler Gator Chomps after being introduced at Gators Madness on Oct. 2, 2015, in the O'Connell Center.
