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UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 29, 2015Michael WhiteGainesville, Florida COACH WHITE: Hello, thanks for coming. Great to be here. I guess first of all, it's right around the corner, so it's an exciting time for us and our basketball program. We've had a productive off-season. Our guys have really worked. We feel like we've made some strides in some areas and we're eager for it to start really officially. We're going to take advantage of today going two hours, and then Friday will be, I guess, the first official day of practice where we can go for a little bit longer than that and start dipping into four hours at the most on a given day. We'll take advantage of that probably a few times early on this fall. So, again, basketball is in the air, and it's an exciting time for us. Q. How critical is it having, I guess, 30 practices over 45 days to install what you want to install and getting the new system in place? COACH WHITE: Very, very important for us, of course. With the transition, with a new philosophy, plenty of new philosophies really, offensively and defensively, with regard to presses and schemes, and baseline out of bounds, sideline out of bounds. There are so many things to be covered, especially with a team full of a bunch of new guys, seven new guys and DeVon Walker who is coming off the year with the ACL in play. It's a very, very new team. It's a new staff. So these first couple months are as important as any part of the season to say the least. Q. I know over the off-season you challenged Dorian to be a leader. How has he responded to that so far? COACH WHITE: He's been great. Dorian individually has played really well. He's been our best player in workouts so far. We've kind of had mini practices as of late, one-hour deals where it's obviously abbreviated. But we have had competitive circumstances. Dorian's been our best player, and that was expected. We're going to continue to challenge him to be more and more vocal and to lead. He's always led by example. He's a guy that the rest of our team looks up to, especially between the lines. He's been there and done that and played significant minutes on the Final Four team. He's put up big numbers at times in a very, very competitive league. Especially our new guys look to Dorian for that leadership. Kasey Hill has been a guy as well who has picked up how many times he's talking and what he's saying, and he's a guy that needs to continue to lead as well for us to be successful. Q. What is going to be the most noticeable difference with your offense? I know it's going to be more dribble drive, probably high pick-and-roll, but can you give us maybe a run down of what to expect offensively? COACH WHITE: Yeah, there are still a lot of question marks offensively. For us right now we have more emphasis on the defensive side of the ball and on skill development, on the level of intensity at practice, the tempo at practice, how hard we're competing with one another. Again, the leadership roles, we're trying to buy as much time as possible for offense. As we're competing against each other, we can continue to learn and evaluate what we have, strengths, weaknesses, and that will be probably the bigger part of our focus leading into our first couple games. Those last two, three weeks we'll probably spend more time on offense than anything else. Right now I just want to make sure we're going at a really high level. We still have yet to have a real practice. So we haven't had tons of opportunity to evaluate. I would imagine that we're going to have an opportunity to take advantage of a big guy though in John Egbunu who can score on the interior. He's done it at the Division I level. He's had a great off-season. I think we're an athletic team. I think there is going to be a lot of parity on our roster, a lot of athleticism and length. I'd like to play fast. I think that we can play fast offensively, to what extent defensively, we'll find out. But I'm pretty optimistic that we're going to be pretty effective. We're very much evaluating at this point. Q. What's it like with Egbunu? You mentioned him. I don't know how many big men you've had that you've worked with like that. How challenging is it to pull your offense to work a guy in like that? COACH WHITE: It's not challenging at all. I think most coaches would stand up here and tell you they're going to do their best to take advantage of their strengths. We have a guy that can score it on the interior, we're going to throw him the ball. We're going to throw him the ball at least at times. There will be other times where we try to score other ways. But we had a big guy at Louisiana Tech whose strength was in shot blocking and he was unbelievable. Michael Kyser who signed recently here with the Raptors. But my first year I inherited a big kid by the name of Romario Souza who finished his senior year. A really strong kid, a Brazilian kid who put up numbers late in the season and really came on. We got to the point where we were playing offense through him. So, again, this was four years ago; my first year as a head coach. We changed about two-thirds of the way through the season offensively in terms of how we were trying to tackle our opponents. So how productive John is for us, what percentage he shoots from the field, how often he can convert from the foul line, how well we execute to get him the ball, all those things will determine how many touches he gets. Q. What have been your impressions of KeVaughn Allen, and how much do you think he might be able to contribute? COACH WHITE: KeVaughn, like a lot of guys on our roster has a chance to start. There are a lot of spots available. Dorian Finney-Smith is going to be hard to beat out, of course. Kasey Hill and Cris Chiozza are battling every day for that point guard position. Both of them have had really good off-seasons, and at times we could probably play them together as Coach Donovan did last year. But KeVaughn is fighting for those -- one of those wing positions. He's very talented. He's in the gym as much as anybody that we have. So it's a really unique freshmen class with him and Kevarrius and Keith Stone being the key guys that have been in that practice probably as much as anyone on our team, which is really refreshing. It's exciting about the future of the program. Q. Who are you picking Saturday night? COACH WHITE: In what game? Q. (No microphone)? COACH WHITE: Got to go with the Gators, don't we? I love the Rebels, but I'm a Gator. Q. Year three for Kasey Hill. What are your expectations for him this year? What are you hoping he takes a step forward in? COACH WHITE: Again, leadership, communication, the obvious is sitting there, Kasey knows it, you know it, I know it. He's got to shoot it better, and I've got to do my best to put him in position to be successful. He's got to shoot better from the foul line, from the arc. He's got to take great shots. He's got to continue to be in the gym more and more. Our staff, including myself are continuing to encourage him to do that. But one of the constants and things he can control is defensive energy. The utilization of his speed and quickness, which are to me as fast as anybody in college basketball. So the big challenge to him is, hey, let's keep working on our skill level. Let's get our shooting percentage up as high as we can. Some of that, sometimes free throws fall and sometimes they don't. We're going to do the best we can in those areas, but we have to have you lead and you have to play with unbelievable energy defensively. And he's embraced that challenge thus far. Q. Your thoughts on bringing back Gator Madness and what went into it and what you're hoping to see? How do you think it will help you? COACH WHITE: I don't know a lot about it, honestly. I was approached by our administration and it was their suggestion. Obviously we have a really good administration, so I follow their lead on a lot of things. They thought it would be exciting for our fans to do it again. I think my players are excited about it. Heck, we don't know what to expect, but it will be cool to be in that environment for the first time around a bunch of our fans. I think our staff's excited as with well. Q. Coach White, you talk a lot about DoDo's leadership, but how crucial is he to the team's success? Would it be safe to say the team goes as he goes? COACH WHITE: Yeah, I hope that's not the case, but it may be the case at times. He's our most knowledgeable guy. By far and away our most experienced guy. He's older. He's very, very bright. Again, he's got leadership skills that he needs to use more, and that will continue to be a challenge. He's our best offensive player. He should be, we hope he's our best offensive rebounder. He's coming of a year that he led the team in rebounding. His offensive rebounding numbers were really good last year. We hope that the defensive rebounds the ball a little better. But he's a guy that night-in and night-out he's got to at least match his spot. We've got to feel at DoDo's position, at least on most nights, that he'll win that spot. Q. (No microphone)? COACH WHITE: DeVon has got a contagious energy level. He's a guy that you like seeing come into workouts because he lifts the intensity level of the guys around him. He's a hard worker. He's in the gym a ton. He's a really good defender. I think the faster of the tempo of the game, the more conducive it will be for him. So we're hopeful that we can play that way. I think he'll be good in press and half court pressure, he'll be a really good offensive rebounder for us, and he needs to be able to just knock down open threes. We're going to keep the floor spaced. We have a lot of team speed especially with those two point guards we talked about with KeVaughn Allen and Francis-Ramirez is a really good play maker. So with those four guys, guys like DeVon and DoDo and Alex Murphy, those guys need to step up and make open threes. Just open good looks, and that's something that we need him to do as well. Q. (No microphone)? COACH WHITE: In a perfect world I'd like to play nine or ten guys. With this group we may be able to play more, but it may not be in our best interest either. Those are things that are yet to be determined. Dorian will be a guy, I imagine we're going to lean on heavily in a lot of areas. So it might be hard at times to take him out of the game. If John can have the impact that I'm hopeful he can have, there might be times that we try to take a possession off of pushing it down the other team's throats just to give him a breather or times where we maybe back off on some pressure or full court press, but for a guy like John or maybe a couple other guys that emerge or may emerge. Q. What has Justin Leon's transition been like so far and what have you seen from him in workouts? COACH WHITE: Justin's got some qualities that I mentioned about DeVon Walker. He's a hard working kid. Very emotional like Brandone Francis. Plays at a high level of intensity, really, really competitive. I've been really pleased with him and his work ethic, how he's caught on to some of the terminology, some of the things that we do both offensively and defensively. Even though a lot of it we hadn't even talked about yet. So two weeks from now I'll have a much better answer and a much better idea as to what kind of impact Justin can have as well as the other new guys. Q. You weren't here last year, but it was a frustrating season for Florida. I'm wondering with the new staff, does that take care of itself in terms of any kind of mental work you have to do with these guys to kind of move past that? COACH WHITE: That's a good question. I think that in talking with Coach Donovan, they had a really productive spring, and they used last season as motivation. We're continuing to try to do that. But let's not question how good we are. We know we're better than this, and these are the areas that we need to fix, that we can improve upon. That's more the approach that we've taken. Challenging our guys rather than questioning our abilities. Again, we're a different team. We're a new staff. We're going to have a bunch of new ways of doing things. We had three transfers sitting out. Three capable freshmen and talented freshmen coming in. Justin Leon, DeVon Walker coming off an injury. So we can use the losing season as motivation, and we're going to do that. But this is a totally different team. Q. How much film of last year's team did you watch, and how does that help you learn about some of the returning players? COACH WHITE: I watched, oh, I wish I had a number for you. 31 regular season and a couple maybe -- one or two in the tournament, so 32 games. I bet I watched two thirds of them. I know I watched all of the like opponents, I believe. It's been a while. It was in the first six weeks or so of getting here. But it was a big tool. It was the biggest tool other than talking to former staff members to learn about guys' strengths and weaknesses, and then about the team's strengths and weaknesses, what made them go, what they were good at. Maybe certain reasons that they didn't get quite over the hump, especially offensively. I thought defensively, and again, this is we're all ready to turn the page and this is about this year's team. But I was really impressed with how well they defended, last year's team, especially in the half court. We're the 11th ranked defense in the country last year, and that's considering not having a big shot blocker and also considering defensive transition numbers that weren't great. So we hope to improve those numbers and hope to be equally as good in the half court. Got to communicate at a higher level defensively. Got to block more shots, take more advantage of our speed. Offensively we talked about our shooting percentage needs to go up. Our turnover margin has got to get a little better. We've got to find the best positions to put these guys into. But that's where it all started. It was evaluating a lot of those games from last season. I'll add one more thing. It was amazing how close last season's team was in so many games. Five or six games that I watched could have so easily gone the other way. It was really a unique season. One stat that sticks out is the free throw percentage of the other teams. What was it? I think Florida was second to last in the country in free throw percentage against them, which is obviously something you can't really work on. It's just an unlucky deal. Q. (No microphone) shows the struggle there on the line. What have you seen from both of them in terms of improving that, and also just three-point shooting, I think their percentages are pretty low? COACH WHITE: Yes, those are two guys in two areas that we've addressed. They're big factors for us. Chris Chiozza and Kasey Hill are two of the fastest guys out there in college basketball. Kasey Hill may be the fastest. So they're going to have space. Guys are going to give them space to stay in front of the basketball, especially in transition. They're going to get open looks. Some of it is technique. It means we've missed tweaked with strokes, if you will. We've missed with Kasey's stroke a little bit. He's been helpful. He's been open to that. He's shooting the ball a little bit differently. You've got to give him credit. He's a junior in college and he's changed the way he's shot the basketball for the last 15 years. We feel that's helped him a little bit. Obviously, muscle memory with shooting is the biggest factor. Guys paying the price, earning the right, being in the gym and living in the gym. And that's something that Coach Donovan talked a lot about last year. Some of it is mental. Just it's confidence. As coaches, one of the things that we can control is how many reps we get with the limited amount of hours that you have and the environment that those reps are taken. What we've tried to do, and I know Coach Donovan did it as well just looking back and watching practices, try to go as much as possible and continue to do so is taking free throws and taking threes while you're tired, when guys are winded. We try to mix in a conditioning drill with pressure free throws and try to penalize guys for not making those shots. Even though the pressure is different. They're playing in front of the fans under the lights on TV, it's a different pressure. But we try to the at least put them in pressure situations as much as possible. So it's all just experience. I expect those guys to shoot the basketball better this year. Kasey's stroke has improved. There is nothing wrong with Chris Chiozza's technique. Hopefully just as a sophomore with some of the things we've talked about he'll shoot a higher percentage. Chris has shot the ball really well from three over the past couple of months. Q. What, if anything, can you draw from four years ago at Louisiana Tech, your first season coaching there, in terms of just coaching a new group and getting acclimated to it? Any bumps in the road that could happen the first year of the season? COACH WHITE: Great question. There are some similarities in that you're learning on the fly. There is a lot of trial and error. We have thoughts about each guy about the way we think we may be able to play, and some of the strengths that we think we have and some of the things we think we may not be very good at this, and in a month from now some of those things may be reversed. So there is going to be some trial and error. There is going to be some give and take with us learning from our guys and our guys learning from us. Ownership is something we preach every day. And if Dorian Finney-Smith and DeVon Walker and Kasey Hill come to me and say, Coach, what do you think about this? Hey, we're all for it, we're all for it. That said, the one advantage is your first year the head coach never called a timeout or run practice, wow, that was more eye-opening. The one thing that we do know is we have all the support in the world. We have all the resources to be successful. We have good players. We have a plan in place. So we're about halfway there, I hope. Q. Coach, from what little we've seen of John Egbunu, he seems like a very quiet guy. Has he opened up at all in practice or is he just kind of yes, sir, no, sir? COACH WHITE: He's very, very passionate. He plays loudly. I wish all our guys would play loudly. He's very aggressive. He plays with a high level of intensity especially if the ball is in his hands or he's around the ball. John is a very talented young man. We expect him to have a really good career. Q. 20 minutes and only one mention of Billy Donovan, that's not bad? COACH WHITE: Did I mention him? Q. Yeah. So I'll go there. Did you reorganize his office? Did you redecorate completely? We talked about the mural being up there before and you decided to leave that up. COACH WHITE: Of course. I point it out anytime we have a recruit on campus. Q. You point it out? COACH WHITE: Not that you need to. Q. I'm just curious, are you and Billy better now? Have you developed even more of a relationship? Do you talk to him? COACH WHITE: Absolutely. He's been incredible. Coach Donovan has been incredible. I'm going through something similar, but at least I'm going through transition with the same rules. It's a different level. It's a different league. We're recruiting a little differently. We're going to go and play probably a little bit differently, and there are a lot of question marks. With Coach Donovan, heck, it's a different game. It's a different game from college basketball, so I can imagine somewhat of what he's going through. And he's taken time on several occasions to reach out or return a call or text from me. I know one thing, he wants Florida to be really successful. He's proud of what he's built. Obviously built something special here. Probably most importantly he wants these kids that he's recruited here to have success. So he cares. He's been very, very helpful, and I'm very appreciative for it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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