Florida basketball had its fair share of ups and downs last season.
Although the Gators were able to secure its third straight trip to the NCAA tournament, many fans were frustrated by the team's play.
When Mike White arrived in Gainesville the plan was to play at an uptempo, however, after some injury challenges inside, the Gators found themselves at playing at one of the slowest tempos in the NCAA.
According to the Gators head coach, last season in particular has taught him to adapt.
"Probably become more open to playing different styles based on necessity," White told reporters at the SEC meetings. "We played so slow last year; I never envisioned playing that way. But we found success with that particular team playing that way."
Florida point guard Andrew Nembhard is set to return for this upcoming season, after flirting with the NBA this offseason. With White's freshmen now experienced sophomores, the Gators could very well see a change in approach.
"I think in any occupation, the more experience you get, the more confidence that you and your organization can gain," he said. "I think we gained a little bit of confidence as a team last year knowing that there's more than one way to skin a cat. As opposed to four years at Louisiana Tech playing exactly the same and then trying to emulate that our first couple years here. But moving forward it will remain to be seen how we'll play based on what team we have."
White will be able to evaluate his team better this summer, however, not in Summer A.
Although four players are currently on campus, White told reporters at the SEC meetings that he plans to use this semester for his players to refresh.
"Summer A is very difficult to turn transcripts and clearing-house stuff, get through all the red tape of getting a guy cleared," White said. "Summer A is tough to do that, so what we do with our returners is give them an option Summer A. You can go home, go hang out with friends or you can stay here. We have four on campus, if I'm not mistaken right now. And then we'll have our entire team July 1."
Florida is set to welcome five signees and Louisiana Tech transfer Anthony Duruji when Summer B commences.
"I think there will be an orientation, so they'll be in a few days before that. We'll have 11 or 12 in that first week," explained White.
Then the work begins.
"It's four hours per week [on the court]. You have eight weeks where you can get four hours work. So you could technically have two two-hour practices in a week. And you have eight of those weeks. We're going to designate two in Summer A and we'll have six designated for Summer B when we have our entire team here.
"So we have those six weeks of four hours, we have 24 hours to structure however you want. It could be all individual workouts, it could be all team practice.
"We'll probably structure it to where we'll have a couple weeks where it's just individual workouts and you might do five 40-minute deals," White added. "Something like that. Or you might do four one-hour segments or you might do a couple individual segments along with a two-hour practice.
"We'll do more individual stuff on the front end, get our legs under us, lift a lot, probably do some conditioning. Probably hardly do any bone-on-bone really competing until later on when you feel like you're less susceptible to injury."
