Thanks for visiting, Mid Major Mike. (Photo via Gator basketball)
Few have had answers for the monster of a Gator basketball program Todd Golden has built in Gainesville so far this year.
His squad has swept the ACC with ease, hammered then-top-ranked Tennessee by 30, conquered old nemesis John Calipari in his new home, and raced out to its best 20-game start since the Final Four team of 2013-14.
So it only made sense that Mike White– the guy who refused to foul up three, who insisted “playing fast was in his DNA” while kicking Andrew Nembhard to the curb for the crime of not playing at his preferred half-speed, who only recruited and signed one center in his first four recruiting classes (Gorjok Gak)– had no answers as his former program humiliated his current one, 89-59. The loss drops White to 0-6 against Florida, the place he once parked in purgatory for seven frustrating seasons before finally figuring out he didn’t belong there.
Mid Major Mike, indeed.
The funny thing about this game is that Georgia actually didn’t just lay down and die. The Bulldogs entered the came averaging 5.5 made threes a game, but came out of the gates swinging with five threes in the first twelve minutes. Georgia held their own on the boards for a little while, too, and five minutes into the game only trailed 16-11.
But then Georgia started turning the ball over– another Mike White staple– and the world saw that Georgia was not actually that great of a three-point shooting team, that they simply started the game anomalously hot, and the Mid Major Mike machine was in over its head and therefore sunk. It was 30-13, then it was 51-24, and then it became 75-41. From there, the Gators cruised to the final margin of 89-59.
Florida figured out against South Carolina that it could have a lot of success with an aggressive trapping defense, and the team that White amassed at Georgia simply couldn’t figure out a way around it. The Bulldogs– led by a guy who claimed “playing fast is in my DNA,” remember– turned the ball over 18 times, which is bad even by their standards of 13 turnovers per game. The bulk of those turnovers were the live-ball variety, leading to Florida running in transition, and that, in turn, led to 23 Gator fast-break points.
Perhaps the true defining moment of this game– the moment that encapsulated both Mike White’s career as a whole and his futility against his old team– came late in the first half. Realizing that working on a comeback was pointless, Mike White changed tactics and started working the officials instead down 20. As he was in the middle of one of his complaints, Walter Clayton picked the pocket of Blue Cain and fired an outlet pass to Will Richard for an easy layup. So White actually didn’t get to see Florida score those two points.
But he needn’t have felt too badly. It wasn’t like he could’ve done anything to stop it anyway, and plus, the Gators provided him with a real-life instant replay less than three minutes later. This time, Clayton robbed Savo Drezgic and hit Alijah Martin on the breakaway for two more points.
This was a case of two basketball teams on completely different levels. Golden first beat White for all the talented (and, well, just plain bigger) players he donned in orange and blue, put together a better, more naturally explosive offensive system for them to run, taught them how to press on defense, and thus won this game long before it tipped off.
And it just serves as the latest data point that Mike White didn’t belong at Florida. One stray Elite 8 run with Billy Donovan players doesn’t compensate for a complete lack of situational awareness (never mind his refusal to foul up three in NCAA Tournament games against Wisconsin and Virginia Tech; remember how he stubbornly stuck with a zone defense against Kentucky on March 7, 2020 as the Cats kept puncturing it with three after three? I do!), a refusal to adjust his team’s playbook and/or offensive style for the personnel he has (Andrew Nembhard laughs as he remembers this) and his inability to add guys who can rebound to his team. Mike White was never more deserving of the status “Florida Gators’ men’s basketball coach” than the moniker, “Mid Major Mike,” and if his seven years of mediocrity at Florida didn’t prove it, his three years at Georgia sure do.
There will be more time to talk about all the things this Gator basketball team does well later. It’s a long season, and this team is giving us quite a ride. And to be sure, this team is worthy of far more than being a mere pawn in anti-Mike White narratives.
But this Gator fanbase deserves to have that moment, too. And we’re going to have it right now.
(Aside: if you didn’t appreciate the Mike White simps gaslighting you into believing White was the second coming of Billy Donovan, you can make one hell of a counterpoint with one of our Mid Major Mike t-shirts!)
Anyway, the receipts.
Here’s Frank Frangie warning Florida that they’d made a mistake by running off Mike White and letting him go to a rival. Here’s Dan Hicken promising to save every single anti-Mike White tweet he’d collected. Here’s Mike Bianchi claiming that Florida fans were toxic and unrealistic for daring to demand a Sweet 16 appearance and a top-four finish in the SEC standings. Here’s professional pontificator Jeff Prosser screaming about how Mike White would be hired by Kansas or North Carolina or Duke or Kentucky if they had a job opening in the same breath as he criticized Florida fans for not knowing what they were talking about. Here’s Andy Hutchins of Alligator Army caterwauling on twitter that anybody who ever wanted Mike White fired from Florida never speak again (coincidentally, his Alligator Army site is now defunct, meaning he took his own advice of never speaking again).
All those fun stats about how Mike White wins 20 games a year at Florida and wins a tournament game every year– only John Calipari can say the same, bro!– seem eons ago. It’s just too bad for their publishers that there was an actual way to test the theory that Florida was hitting those bare minimum benchmarks more because of the status of its program than the specific levers being pulled by the guy in charge of it. Oh, if only they’d gotten their way and Mike White had stayed in Gainesville forever, they could’ve just hypotheticalled and theorized their detractors to death.
Yeah– you’re damn right this is a personal victory lap. All I want is to compete for championships, and the Mike White defenders spent years lecturing me about how I needed to just shut up and cheer, because that’s what being a good fan “in all kinds of weather” meant. Besides, they’d argue, who could Florida get who’s any better? It got to the point where I simply collected all the excuses for why Florida should be content with never making the Sweet 16 or contending for an SEC Title ever again and threw them into an excuse-o-matic machine to save them the trouble. But now, their savior is 14-29 against SEC competition at Georgia, while Florida has been steadily ascending over the past three seasons under Todd Golden and now boasts a top-five team in the country.
Turns out, Florida could do better all along.
I was right. You were wrong. Own it.
Just like Todd Golden owns Mid Major Mike.
