Mike White tossed his blue suit jacket to the floor and walked to the center of his team’s huddle before his players had fully assembled. Outsized by all but two of them, the second-year Florida basketball coach wasn’t intimidated.
To the contrary, he wanted to calm his players down after they’d given Vanderbilt a 5-0 lead to open Saturday’s game. He thought he’d done so. But then they dribbled the ball down the floor following the timeout and eventually passed it to center John Egbunu.
Turnover.
Those struggles were the beginning of a trying day for White, which ended in his postgame press conference following the 68-66 loss to the Commodores. He got there after addressing his team, and apparently had mellowed. Because when asked what White told his players, forward Devin Robinson hesitated.
“I don’t know if y'all want me to tell (you) on camera,” he said.
But while everything White said to the assembled reporters was camera-appropriate, it was also brutally honest — a trademark of White’s so far during his time at UF that’s both rare and commendable.
After a loss like the one White’s team suffered on Saturday, many coaches would be furious. Others would be nearly silent. Others still would revert to cliches and sarcasm (cough — Jim McElwain — cough).
White is different.
More than just honest, he’s transparent. He’ll tell you anything you want to know, he’ll do so genuinely and succinctly and, if you want to talk X’s and O’s, he’s happy to do so without thinking about it.
“When you’re switching one through five to negate (Vanderbilt center) Luke Kornet’s ability as a five-man to stretch the defense,” White said after Saturday’s game, “and they have five guys beyond the arc to negate their ability to get a bunch of threes off, and they still get 25 threes off is beyond me. It’s absolutely incredible.”
I’m not a basketball aficionado, so most of that is lost on me. However, for intense, knowledgeable fans and reporters alike, having a coach willing to explain what went wrong in such detail is encouraging.
Beyond that transparency, White also takes and gives blame like nothing, including after the Vanderbilt game.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said in the press conference. “We’ve got to figure it out.”
He added: “We work on it every day. We played lazy offensively at times in that regard, and it led to some of that stagnation.”
He continued: “KeVaughn Allen hasn’t gotten an open three in practice in a month. It’s incredible. I don’t know who our team thinks we are, but we’re not that.”
And putting his interactions with reporters aside, White is simultaneously as intense a coach as you’ll find and as stoic a coach as you’ll find.
One moment, he’s pacing the sideline. Then he’s yelling. Then he’s squatting and observing for minutes at a time. And then he’s pacing again.
That on-court intensity and off-court honesty combine to make him an ideal college coach: one who knows how to do his job and how to explain it to reporters and fans.
But despite all of that praise, his team is, obviously, still on a losing streak. That being the case, all his off-court humility and on-court tactics get put aside for the moment because if he can’t win, none of that matters.
And White knows that. He addressed it after the Vanderbilt game, channeling his only cliche of the day yet still remaining honest about where his team stands.
“I know I’ve said this enough times to wear it out,” White said, “but (we need to) find a way to get better. Find a way to get better every day.”
Ethan Bauer is the sports editor. His column appears on Wednesdays. Contact him at ebauer@alligator.org, and follow him on Twitter @ebaueri.
UF head coach Mike White looks on in Florida's 80-76 win against Georgia on Jan. 14, 2017, at the O'Connell Center.
