The Florida Gators basketball season ended Saturday night with a 64-49 loss to Michigan. And with that, the argument among the fan base about whether he is the right man for the job can resume.
It quieted down after Florida’s win against LSU in the SEC Tournament and even more with the win over Nevada in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. But it’s back now that Florida looked clearly overmatched against Michigan, particularly in the second half.
But making those sorts of decisions after one half, one game, one tournament or even one season is short-sighted. Instead, it makes sense to evaluate a coach based on his body of work compared to his peers.
So how can we evaluate Mike White?
Pick a coach, any coach
Given winning percentage, SEC winning percentage and point differential, which of the following coaches would you want to lead your program after their first four seasons at Florida?
First four seasons for the previous three Florida head coaches. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
Coach 1 is Billy Donovan. In his first four years at Florida, he won more than 61 percent of his games and 52 percent of SEC games. He also led Florida to the National Championship game in his fourth season.
Coach 3 is Lon Kruger. He won just slightly less than Donovan but also led Florida to the Final Four in his fourth season.
Coach 2 is Mike White. White has won at a higher clip overall and in SEC play than both Donovan and Kruger. He also has a point differential that is virtually identical to that of Donovan. Of course, he just lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in his fourth season and has never gotten further than the Elite Eight.
The reality is that if you look at the first four years of the last three Florida head coaches, White has been better than anyone else.
The other reality is that point differential is a really good identifier of success. We can see this if we look at Florida’s Final Four teams since Donovan took over the program.
Florida basketball’s point differential from 1996-2018, with Final Four appearances circled. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
Three of the four seasons with the highest point differential produced teams that made the Final Four. The highest differential came in the 2012-13 season and ended in a loss in the Elite Eight to Michigan. Of course, that Wolverines team had six players who would eventually go on to play in the NBA so it isn’t as if that loss is an embarrassment.
Indeed, even Elite Eight seasons have required a minimum point differential of 8.7 and an average of 12.0 points per game. White has hit that hurdle once and made it to the Elite Eight in the 2016-17 season.
But the problem is that the program under Donovan kept going up after year four while the Florida program under White has clearly regressed this year.
Except the program didn’t just continue up under Donovan. Certainly the program reached new heights, but that wasn’t until the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons, Donovan’s tenth and eleventh seasons at the helm.
But there was the five-year period from 2000-2004 where the Gators couldn’t make it out of the second round of the Tournament. I have to admit that had I looked at the point differential of Donovan during that time-span, I would have said he was underachieving. After all, if you’re beating teams by more than 10 points per game, you should have more success in the tournament?
Luckily I don’t make those decisions. Then AD Jeremy Foley gave Donovan time, and was rewarded with the two national titles.
So does Mike White deserve that level of patience?
Is White building or regressing?
Certainly, this season doesn’t impart a ton of confidence. Florida’s point differential dipped down significantly, not much above where it was during White’s first year. But if we look a little bit deeper, there is a reason for that.
Florida’s 2018-19 basketball roster sorted by minutes played, true freshmen in red. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
This team was incredibly young. Andrew Nembhard, Noah Locke and Keyontae Johnson all finished in the top-5 for minutes played this year. They are all true freshmen. Perhaps not coincidently, they also were three of the four most talented players on the team, according to 247Sports recruiting rankings.
And that’s the good news/bad news situation for the 2019-20 season. The recruiting class that White is bringing in is ranked 10th in the country and includes the following players:
- 5-star small forward Scottie Lewis, ranked 12th nationally
- 5-star point guard Tre Mann, ranked 26th nationally
- 4-star center Omar Payne, ranked 43rd nationally
Combine those guys with Nembhard, Locke and Johnson and you have a really strong core for White to build on.
To be clear, this is not the same argument that was used to justify giving Jim McElwain more time on the football side of things. McElwain never had a top-10 recruiting class in his three years at Florida while each of the three previous coaches had a top-3 class in their second year.
In White’s case, his national recruiting average for the past three seasons (excluding his transition year) has been 15.7 compared to 21.7 for Donovan’s last three years. That includes three 5-star recruits for both White and Donovan. Basically, White should have a full cabinet of talent next year for a fair comparison.
If you’re going to criticize White for anything this season, it is the development of the 2017 recruiting class. That class included Deaundrae Ballard (101st nationally), Isaiah Stokes (123rd nationally) and Mike Okauru (260th nationally).
Minutes distribution based on recruiting class during the 2018-19 season. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
As you can see in the chart above, those players’ minutes consistently decreased throughout this year as the 2018 class slowly took over. Now one way to look at this is that it means that the freshmen were improving. The other way to look at it is the sophomores weren’t.
Takeaway
Sometimes I think the perception of the program that Mike White took over is a little bit skewed.
The year before he arrived, Donovan’s 2014-15 team went 16-17 with a point differential of 3.6 points per game. That team was relatively light on talent, which is why players like Canyon Barry and Jalen Hudson had to come in as transfers.
Combine that with a transition recruiting class ranking of 69th for White in 2016, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that 2018-19 was a relative down-year. But since that class, White has brought in classes ranked 20th, 17th and now 10th, which indicates Florida is headed in the right direction as far as talent accumulation is concerned.
But I still think the first chart I showed above with the comparison of Florida’s last three coaches is instructive here. White has had a better record and a very similar point differential over his first four years compared to Donovan. Kruger had a similar record to Donovan but a much lower point differential and flamed out two years after his Final Four appearance.
If White were putting up underlying stats like Kruger, I would be solidly in the camp that thinks Florida should find someone else. But he’s way closer to Donovan than I would have thought when I started with this analysis.
I don’t agree with people suggesting that he should lose his job after this season. He deserves to have four full recruiting cycles and the chance to develop players that he recruited into the core of the team. He doesn’t deserve that because it’s some generic hot take. He deserves that because his teams’ underlying numbers suggests that he has earned it.
Last year I wrote that based on his performance up to that point, White deserved two more years to show Scott Stricklin what he could do. I stand by what I said then. But the pressure is about to ratchet up for White.
He is adding two 5-star recruits to the freshman core that he brought in this season. The expectation is that those two classes are going to perform, regardless of their youth.
A 20-16 record and a second round NCAA Tournament exit used to be acceptable at Florida. Billy Donovan changed that. Fans aren’t going to be pleased with anything less than a record with single-digit losses. Fair or not, those are the expectations.
But based on his record thus far, I think White will be able to meet those starting next season.
Ken Clarke
Excellent, informative analysis, Will. As usual. After reading classy, well-written articles like yours it’s difficult to return to the routine Gator sites where spelling and grammar are daily challenges to the writers.
Bless you, Will, from the bottom of my Strunk & White heart.
Brian Cook
Nice analysis. I feel like the other reason for regression this year was that they started off thin on their frontline, and then lost two of their three best bigs to injury. I guess you could argue some of the blame for that goes to White for not building up enough depth, but these days, building up backcourt depth is more important and I feel like White has done that. This year’s team played a brutal schedule, played hard and got better as the season went on, and got a couple really nice wins. Gator fans are really spoiled if they think that’s a bad season.
CGator
I agree. The teams play hard, and the defense is one of the best in the country, despite being hurt by a plague of injuries to the big men, leaving us vulnerable inside and hurting on the boards. Stokes hurt the team by being out of shape, something we have seen in the past, and he does seem to have realized what he needs to do. Also, our shooters have been very inconsistent; hitting a couple of those open threes early in the second half might have made the Michigan game very different. We need better offensive talent, and of course, the recruiting is looking very good. White definitely deserves more time, and everything I read says Stricklin is solidly in his corner. Fans simply expect too much today, too fast; Mullen would have been fired several times already if the Chicken Littles had any say. As your article points out, Donovan did not leave White a great team or talent. White is having to build it back up, and the recruiting says that he is. Stricklin is smart enough to give him time, and ignore the fans who panic at every opportunity.
Will Miles
Agree with most of this, but nobody has called for Mullen to be fired.
CGator
Well, I’m talking about the chat boards. You are probably right that no one outright said fire him, but I read plenty of fan comments early on that Mullen simply wasn’t up to the job, couldn’t recruit, can’t close, etc. The roller coaster during the early recruiting days (not so long ago!) was up when we got a commitment, down when we didn’t. There were a lot of negative comments that basically equated to Mullen being, if not a bad hire, not good enough to get where the Gators want to go. That is changing, but many fans can only see the bad. If Florida gets better, but has the same, or slightly worse, record this year as last, and Mullen doesn’t pull a top 3 class, you will once again hear a lot of moaning and groaning. Myself, I think Mullen is building the team for long-lasting success. But many Gator fans are among those who think every season is a failure if we don’t win the NC.
Will Miles
You’ll hear that groaning from me too. 5th in the SEC in football recruiting won’t cut it long-term. I’ve compiled plenty of evidence that suggests why. If people disagree with the evidence or the conclusions that I’m drawing, that’s fine. I’m actually thrilled to have a debate based on the historical record. I can still be a fan and hope for the best while understanding that not meeting certain metrics matters and points towards a ceiling compared to Alabama and Georgia.
As for basketball, the baseline is different. Donovan didn’t recruit at a Duke level. I wrote last year that he was more Jim Boeheim than Coach K from a recruiting and record perspective. Boeheim is a HOF coach, but he’s had some up and down years. The same was true of Donovan and will be true of White. I have a lot more patience on the basketball side of things than the football side, both because tournament success is much more random, one-and-dones change the landscape really quickly and White is definitely not Lon Kruger.
Geof
Certainly a good analysis but I’m not even close to giving up on Coach White. There were games the team should not have lost and games that were a joy to watch. Injuries and disappearances were a big factor. I’m thrilled with the freshman and the new guys. Next year will be fun.
bf
Mittens (White), I’d bet, has lost more games as a favorite than any other Power conference coach. Three straight NCAA appearances does not merit another year. Fire him yesterday and put a man in that job.
Kenneth HAckett
It is obvious White can recruit. I am not sure that he is a good coach. My biggest concernt is his inability to have his players grow and improve
each year. That was not the case with Hudson and Allen.
Craig B
Nice article but be careful using class average in basketball. Class size and point generation can vary wildly. The Gators have the second highest rated class if you go by player average. There has been a huge jump in player average. Coach’s seven highest ranked recruits have been in the last two classes. Doesn’t change the narrative but shows how much more talent he is bringing in.
Luke
Where’s D. Bassett on the team list? Not that it’s that important since you were mainly pointing out the freshmen that were starting.
RVAGator
Will Miles – appreciate the data insights and it appears you could have worded the take-away more strongly in Mike White’s favor based on the data so far. To your initial question / table, the #2 coach was WAAYY better than the other two I thought (I thought it was Billy!).
One of Mike White’s biggest problems is that the level of competition in the SEC has gone up since he arrived at UF. Before there were only 2-3 top 20/25 teams in any year, now there’s 5-6. If Auburn, Tennessee, LSU, Miss State and frankly FSU weren’t having the success they’re having, this is a different conversation. Florida fans need to pump the breaks and be patient with Coach White. An important note that isn’t included here is that neither Mike White nor any of his assistants are being investigated by the FBI. I’ll take that all day over this Will Wade embarrassment.