GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The Florida men's basketball team opened up the season as the No. 6 team in the country. However, as the Gators prepare to face Vanderbilt (8-12, 0-7) on Saturday, the team sits at 12-8, 4-3 in the SEC.
They are headed to Nashville hoping to snap a three-game skid.
With the high expectations coming into the season, the last few games has had a lot of Gator Nation asking questions about the direction of the program. White and his side have received plenty of criticism - some fair and some not - but still the noise is there.
"I haven’t given it any thought, honestly," White told reporters on Friday. "I’m focused on today’s practice."
To be fair, White has a lot to focus on with his side's defensive issues the last few games.
After beating No. 4 Auburn by an impressive 22 points, Florida has lost the next three. One can forgive tough losses to LSU on the road and a loss against No. 1 Baylor, but the second half performance against Mississippi State is hard to swallow for many.
"What a crazy game," said White. "We were chunking it in the stands, making poor decisions, really struggled to score in transition offense."
White has not been shy of saying his team needs to grow up, needs to mature. He has not come out and called his side weak, but White, along with a few players, have said this team needs to toughen up.
"We are soft mentally, there’s no doubt about it," said White. " I think that’s prevalent with teams that are built like this. Our older guys, which are a senior and three sophomores they’ve gotta be tougher too. But our freshman are, they’re going through tough times expectedly so. They’re 18, 19 years old. I’m not trying to give these guys a pass but until these guys have gone through- however they phrase it to you all post-game- the deficiency in the second half we just weren’t quite as tight defensively as we were."
Although the offense received most of the early criticism, that side of the game has improved. Florida is now leading the SEC in both field goal percentage and three-point field goal percentage.
"I don’t know that anyone’s made a bigger improvement during the season than the Florida Gators from an offensive standpoint," said White. "I’ve got to credit these guys for that. We’ve come a long way offensively."
The team, however, needs to find the balance.
"Just collectively we’re just an average defensive team right now and not improving," said White. "Some of it could be mental and/or physical fatigue. Some of it is desire and pride. We talk about accountability a bunch. We haven’t been very accountable defensively. A big urge yesterday in meetings with our guys was to find more peer accountability, to find more guys calling each other out on mistakes.
" I think we’ve got a group of really, really nice young men that tippy-toe around challenging each other too often," added White. "The word ‘edge’ was used earlier. We’ve got to have a lot more edge and I think sometimes that can come more effectively from your peers.”
According to White, he needs his sophomores and Kerry Blackshear to step up to lead the charge, while also pointing to Scottie Lewis as another player that has stepped up in recent games.
"My teammates and I, we’re always talking to each other about certain things we can all get better at," said Lewis. " There’s certain things that, you know, people are better at than others, so it’s kind of my job to anchor the defense, just bring the energy and that constant communication, and get those guys hyped off. When we’re playing well offensively, I think we play even better defensively in some games. So, we’re going to pick it up."
Within the program, there seems to be a level of faith that there is still time to find the answers needed to turn the season around.
Players are unconcerned.
"Not really to be honest," said Lewis. "I love my teammates. I know they work hard, I know they’re in the gym every day. I see them, they see me. You know it’s not like they don’t want to win games. Certain things happen during the game that are just bound to happen. It’s just our reaction speed and how we react to those things.
"I think once our reactions and how we come together is put into one, we’re going to be pretty good. You know there’s talk about there being 11 or 12 guaranteed games left in the season. That gave us a little boost of motivation yesterday as well. My teammates are ready. They’re good guys and they want to win and I think we’re a brotherhood and I think when we say that, we mean it. So I trust them, they trust me, we trust our coaching staff and we trust our preparation. So I think once we have our, a true 'A' game, where we’re 'A' defensively and 'A' offensively, we’re going to have a, kind of a visual of what that looks like and we can take that from there."
"We were exposed to a high level very early against a real schedule," White said. "You had a lot of teams playing nine guarantee games. We don’t do that here. So we were exposed early, and that was a good thing because we know now, we know exactly who we are and what our deficiencies are."
"I think we could be pretty dangerous and I think we took a huge step yesterday just figuring out the way people’s minds work and the way we could communicate with each other better," said Lewis.
As Florida heads to Nashville to face Vandy, White and the Gators will continue to block out the noise.
"I don’t read any of it," White said. "I don’t care what anyone writes, says, at all -- anything. It’s not going to affect anything that I do, say, or my preparation for this practice, this game...help these young men get better every day and hopefully steal one on the road. That’s it. That’s all you can do."
