GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Tre Mann arrived at Florida surrounded by hype.

The McDonald's All-American and Gainesville native is in the middle of his first season at Florida. The freshman tipped off the year with an 11-point performance against North Florida and quickly was lauded as a weapon.

However, a concussion and some underwhelming performances by the Gators later, the first-year player is searching for confidence.

"He's got to be aggressive, got to be confident. He's thinking a lot," Gators head coach Mike White said on Thursday. "He's such a good natural scorer."

If anyone would understand Mann's predicament it would be Noah Locke.

"I tell him whenever I see he’s down or feeling some type of way I go and talk to him," said Locke."I just tell him I was literally in this same exact situation as you."

Unlike fellow sophomore Andrew Nembhard, Locke did not start his freshman season as a starter. He had to fight for playing time early in his Gators career, only seeing his playing time increase six games into the season.

"I tell him nothing ever is going to be given to you, nothing’s going to be easy for you and something that you want you’re going to have to go get and take it for yourself," explained Locke. "And I just give him certain different tips of how Coach White wants things to go, just life things, I just try to help him as much as I can because I know I was in that situation and I know exactly how I felt.

"I had my father and my older brother come to me and talk to me about just keeping it real with me, just keeping it honest and telling me the things I had to do. Having them, it made me feel that much better and I’m just trying to give Tre those things also and I feel like it’s helping him."

Locke has certainly had an impact.

According to White, Mann had one of his best practices on Wednesday.

“I think it’s taking him time to adjust," said Nembhard. "I think what Coach White says about him being more competitive, that’s when he plays his best. I think that’s what he did yesterday [Wednesday]. I think in time it will show more in the games.”

It takes time to acclimate from high school to college basketball. Locke admitted several times in the last year, that he was a bit overwhelmed when he first arrived in Gainesville.

Mann is still adjusting. An adjustment that is a bit more challenging since in his case, the guard is also learning to play multiple positions for White.

"That's not always the best recipe, but that's, we're trying to provide him opportunity to steal minutes as the one, two and three," explained White. "Our two and three are interchangeable, but he's got to learn all our spots and all of our actions from multiple positions. Not trying to give him an excuse, but he's had a lot of possessions where I think he's overthinking it. And it's been communicated very clearly we want him to be aggressive and assertive and confident. And when he's playing with confidence he's hard to guard."

It's a process.

"With Tre, he just hasn’t quite settled. And when he does settle in, then we’ll pursue the maintenance of that," said White. " But in an effort to have him settle in, I don’t know whether it’s going to be at the 1, at the 2, at the 3, on the ball, off the ball, or a combination of, you know, ‘We’re just throwing it all at the wall right now in an effort to help him get going’.

"Some of it’s on him, some of it’s on me, some of it’s on his teammates. It’s all of us, we’ve got to help him get going, but that’s not the biggest factor either. Because we’ve all got to get in a better offensive rhythm. He’s just the one to me — you know there’s a few that stick out that probably individually could give us more offensively, none more so than him of course, because of his talent, and because, he’s had several practices, including yesterday, where he’s scored as well as anybody on the court.”

Mann can be the best natural scorer of them, however, if he lacks the confidence than his talent will never materialize on game day.

“It’s important for him to get his confidence back and to see him playing like how he knows how to play," said Nembhard. "That will be great for us because we know he can do it. It’s just a matter of time.”