White talks COVID-19 impact, Castleton's status and speeding up UF's pace

The last time the Florida Gators men's basketball team took the court was back on March 7, which resulted in a close 70-71 loss to Kentucky.

Then, before they had an opportunity to potentially begin a run in the SEC Tournament, the novel coronavirus outbreak put a halt to their season.

While there is still a lot of uncertainty about the return of collegiate sports in general, UF Head Coach Mike White hopped on a Zoom call with media members today to talk about the upcoming season.

White opened up about how his team will look different next season, the status of Michigan transfer Colin Castleton and the impact that this current pandemic has had on the program.

Florida is adding a handful of new players to their roster.

White and his staff are welcoming in junior college product Osayi Osifo, as well as true freshmen Niels Lane and Samson Ruzhentsev. They will also have Anthony Duruji and Tyree Appleby available after the two of them sat out last year due to NCAA transfer rules.

With these new additions, White is hoping to pick up his group's pace of play in their 2020-2021 campaign.

“Playing fast is really in my DNA," White said. "It’s what I want to do. It’s what our guys want to do. I know it’s what our fans want to see as well. At the end of the day, you’ve gotta do the best with what you’ve got."

"We’ve been able to attract some really good players here that have all been a little bit different," White later added. "Going into this season I feel like, for the first time in a while, we’ll have a high level of speed, quickness, and athleticism from our whole roster, and I think we’ll be very deep. We look forward to playing fast, pressing, and just playing to our strengths.”

Players like Andrew Nembhard and Kerry Blackshear Jr. are no longer with the program, but the guys Florida is bringing in could give them a number of options to work with. More specifically, White views this team as one that could potentially be deep and very athletic.

"It will be as athletic as a team as I’ve ever had the opportunity to coach, as I’ve ever had a team as we’ve had here at Florida in a while," White said. "Also, this time of year you always think you’re going to be really deep and you hope you’re saying the same thing midseason. I think this team at least has a chance to be really deep and interchangeable. I'm convicted to press more. We're going to do that, especially early on and evaluate from there."

Back in late April, the Gators scored another victory in the transfer portal as they landed Michigan Wolverines big man Colin Castleton. The 6-foot-11 power forward, who averaged 3.1 points and 2.4 rebounds as a sophomore, will have two years of eligibility remaining.

Whether or not Castleton plays this year is still somewhat up in the air, but White did note that he has applied for an NCAA waiver to be immediately eligible.

“He has applied for one, and that’s all I can give you at this point," White said of Castleton. "Who knows how that will end, but he’s trying to get a waiver."

White and company have done an excellent job of dipping into the portal and landing transfers. Castleton is one example, as well as Blackshear, Jalen Hudson and several other players.

Given the current climate of recruiting and the inability to see prospects in person, however, White noted that the transfer market could become even more valuable for his program.

"Does it have you consider transfers maybe a little bit more heavily than in the past? I think probably so," White said. "For a lot of programs in college basketball, not necessarily, but at least considering the transfer market, especially as we all assume here at some point in the future that the one-time transfer exception will go through.

"So, I can speak to us most effectively to our staff that we’re considering a number of guys in this class and the following class, but also considering that you might be able to get a guy or two or three, who knows just depending on your current roster as well of next spring, that potentially could be eligible immediately.”

College fans across the nation were rightfully shocked by the cancelation of spring sports earlier this year, and it was definitely a disappointing time for the players as well. Seniors like Blackshear Jr. saw their collegiate careers end unexpectedly, while others had to make the difficult decision to enter their sport's draft or stay with their respective schools for another year.

White says that him and his staff have spoken with their current group about what has transpired recently, and are taking an optimistic approach.

"We just try to talk about the positives and the opportunities we have in front of us and the fact," White said. "One of the bullets that we hit our guys with in the spring was the fact that as disappointed as we were, and we said this before, think about the teams that had half of their season cut or more. We had a couple of teams that were number one in the country and they were rolling. At least for us we got to play... I know it was such a bummer for us, who knows what would have happened for us."

As of right now, it remains to be seen when NCAA sports will return and, if they return in the near future, what changes will be made in terms of testing, travel arrangements, fan attendance and countless other factors.

That decision is beyond White's control, as he noted, so the only option they have is to prepare in a virtual manner and ensure that everyone is keeping themselves in shape on their own time.

"When we’re ready to go, when the powers that be tell us that we can play, that we can practice, that we can work out, whatever, we’re going to be as prepared as any staff in the country," White said. "That way we’ve challenged each other. With regards to the team, we initiated something – we call it Win the Weight. I think we stole it from one of the NBA teams, where we’re talking basketball.

"We’re talking offense, defense. Again, relationship building here in the middle of the summer, early June up until now so that we can be prepared. I guess I don’t know when it’s going to be. I don’t know when we’re going to play. I’m hopeful that it’s really soon."

Another difficult adjustment that White's staff and other programs across the country are making is the way they are recruiting.

Instead of getting prospects on campus or evaluating them in person, the Gators have been needing to rely on communication via phone calls/text messages or Zoom to stay in touch with their targets.

White did say that everyone is on an even playing field, but addressed the concerns with recruiting while speaking with the media.

"It’s always a concern," White said. "It probably slows us down a little bit, makes you a little bit more cautious, probably leads to a little bit more patience on our end, especially considering the fact that the transfer market, we think, is going to change as we just talked about a little earlier. There’s no need to rush into things at certain positions."

Since this is a new day and age, at least for the time being, the manner in which coaches recruit right now looks drastically different that it has in the past. White mentioned that both high school players and college coaches are both dealing with changes, but his staff is doing what they can to make the best of what they got.

"So what we're trying to do is evaluate as many as we can through film and through streaming, but it's still probably not as thorough, definitely not as thorough as it's been in the past," White said. "And I think it goes both ways, too, with these student-athletes, these rising juniors and rising seniors, I'm sure they feel more familiar with certain staffs, but it's different than spending time on campuses and being seen by coaches in person. So there's a lot to it that makes this very different."

Stay tuned to GatorsTerritory.