It’s been nearly a decade now since Florida became just the seventh program ever (and still the most recent) to win back-to-back NCAA Tournament championships. Nearly 10 years later, it’s still every bit as difficult now as it was then to pinpoint where the Gators belong in the mythical college basketball hierarchy.
Mike White has Florida basketball headed in the right direction
Mike White accepted one of the most unenviable tasks in college basketball when he replaced Billy Donovan at Florida, but he might be on the verge of achieving something his predecessor couldn’t during his stint in Gainesville.
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For the bulk of its existence, there was no debate over how irrelevant UF basketball was on a national scale. Despite being a member of the SEC since its inception in 1932, Florida had played in the NCAA Tournament just five times and been to the Sweet 16 only once before Billy Donovan was handed the reins in 1996.
You should be at least partially familiar with how the story goes after that -- 14 trips to the NCAA Tournament, four trips to the Final Four, six SEC regular season titles and two national championships. Even in the midst of all that success, there was always the question of whether the program would keep rolling or revert to the shadows in the post-Donovan era.
Like his predecessor, Mike White is entering his second season as Florida's head coach having still never experienced what it's like to coach in an NCAA Tournament game. White captured three regular season conference championships and won a remarkable 101 games over four seasons at Louisiana Tech, but could never get the Bulldogs over the hump and into the Big Dance. Despite that, his turnaround job in Ruston made him one of the hottest young coaching names in college basketball, and he turned down several fairly high-profile gigs before becoming the man willing to take on the task of replacing Donovan at Florida.
Year one in Gainesville went pretty much according to plan. A Gator team that received little love from the preseason magazines beat who they were supposed to beat and lost to who they were supposed to lose to during the non-conference portion of their season. A late-January upset of then-No. 9 West Virginia in the SEC-Big 12 Challenge got UF some bracketology love in February, but a four-game losing streak near the end of the regular season ultimately relegated White’s first Gator team to the NIT.
It took Donovan until year three in Gainesville to make the tournament for the first time. White is hoping to crack his first field of 68 in year two, and the likelihood of that happening increased dramatically this week.
Canyon Barry, Rick's youngest son and perhaps the most sought-after graduate transfer in the country this season, announced on Monday that he'll be playing his final season of college ball for Florida. He chose the Gators over the likes of Kansas, Louisville, Miami and a host of others who were after the 19.7 point-per-game scorer.
Barry has the potential to flourish under White, who preaches a far more up-tempo style than the one utilized at Charleston, and who was probably one pure scorer away from getting the Gators to the tournament last season. Even with that being the case, playing time won’t be a given for Barry, who becomes the latest member of a deceptively loaded roster at Florida.
KeVaughn Allen was the team's second-leading scorer (11.6 ppg) last season as a true freshman, and would seem to be a lock as the starter at shooting guard. At the three spot, Devin Robinson recently withdrew his name from NBA Draft consideration, and if the stress fracture in his left foot heals properly, he has the potential to be one the SEC's biggest breakout stars in 2016-17. Senior Justin Leon also plays that position, and like Robinson, he stands 6'8 and provides more size and length than Barry does.
Losing leading scorer and rebounder Dorian Finney-Smith will hurt, but he's essentially the only thing that White is losing from a team that was a win or two from making a shocking appearance in the NCAA Tournament. What he returns is a group of talented players who now know exactly what's expected of them, and who formed the backbone of a team that ranked in the top 25 of Ken Pom's defensive efficiency rankings last season. The team needed a boost in the scoring department, and Barry, wherever he plays and however much he plays, should help considerably.
Attempting to reproduce the run of success that Billy Donovan enjoyed at Florida was going to be a mountainous task for whoever replaced him, and there’s no guarantee that Mike White will ever get there. Beating the ghost the in length of time it took to get to the NCAA Tournament would be a nice first step though.
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