GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Immaturity. Young. Emotional. Soft.
Mike White has not been shy to discuss his team's need to grow up mentally. When asked by Gators Territory if this has been his most challenging team to figure out, White said, "by a landslide."
The Florida basketball team has seen its fair share of ups and downs this year. They have lost double-digit leads, and they have also led two incredible come backs. This team is driven by emotions.
They are emotional.
White is quick to say that he likes his group, and he likes their general effort and attitude, however, their inexperience and immaturity continue to hinder their progress.
"Still haven’t found the answers, but we’re going to continue searching," White said. "We’ve got a really good group of guys; [we] were just upstairs in my office hanging out with them. Good guys that will come in today with a great attitude, and they’ll be willing to work and ready to go.
"We’ve just, the immaturities have to decrease. The amount of emotional moments have to decrease. Our level of consistency and stability, mental toughness, have to dramatically increase for this team to max out. And if it doesn’t, it’s not going to happen, it’s just not."
According to White, it comes down to communication.
"We have to stay the course. We've got to be more connected," White said. "We’ve got a certain level of leadership at times I think is really productive and then we have times that we’ve got some guys on the court that struggle to communicate with one another because of sensitivities. Because I don’t like the way that he talked to me -- that’s just putting it out there. We’ve been struggling. We’ve been dealing with this the most, more so than offense and defense, the past six weeks. And we have our bright spots, when we have a practice or we have a half where we are pretty connected.
"You've got to be connected in basketball, especially the guys on the court. And you've got to be connected offensively, you have to be connected defensively, you have to be connected on the glass. That's what we are searching for. I think that's most important with this team by far."
White and his men will need to figure things out quickly. There is only so many games left and they will need to shift its focus away from their loss to Ole Miss and focus on Texas A&M; focus on communicating better; and focus on not letting one bad play turn into a run by the opponent.
"If we got a guy open in the corner and his teammate doesn’t throw it to him and we throw a temper tantrum, it doesn’t allow us to move on to the next play in transition defense and get a stop and defend without fouling and have five guys blocking out and pursuing the basketball with two hands," White said. "We just get into these immature moments. And some of it is for obvious reasons of course. They can’t be an excuse. We have to grow up."
