Florida Gators head coach Mike White and his staff saw all the talent they had on hand in the summer time and wanted to utilize that talent to what they thought would be the fullest extent. Three games in, things weren’t working so they had to make some drastic changes.

Florida brought in some serious skill talent both in the front court and back court in the offseason. Five-star high school prospects Tre Mann and Scottie Lewis and big man grad-transfer Kerry Blackshear all have plenty of God given talent. They were bolstered by other talented players like Top 100 high school forward Omar Payne and quick point guard Ques Glover.

All of that was added to three returning starting sophomores in Andrew Nembhard, Noah Locke, and Keyontae Johnson that were all key components to last year’s successful team.

White wanted to give all of that skill a chance to shine and utilize their talents, but things just didn’t work out that way. So he and the staff made changes.

“I haven’t come out and said this, but we completely revamped what we’re doing after the first, maybe three games,” White said. “We spent the entire fall preparing and banking on being able to execute this kind of stuff offensively. It was not in our best interest. We cut our losses and revamped.”

Shortly after the change, the Gators went on a four-game winning streak and won the Charleston Classic moving back into the AP Top 25 after falling out all the way from the No. 6 spot to start the season. There were some really bright spots in those games, but nothing great.

Then they lost by 14 to a ranked Butler squad last week. Following the contest White said he liked the way they moved the ball on offense, they just need the skill of his players to take over and make some shots.

White saw everything he needed to see when the guys were practicing. Then it was playground time when a crowd was watching. It’s just going to be a process at this point.

“We’re getting better with what we’re doing right now, which is what we should’ve started doing July 1,” White said reluctantly. “We gave our guys a lot of freedom offensively. We were running a lot of freelance, old-school passing game where there aren’t many rules or set calls. It’s about screening for each other, using screens, reading screens, so on and so forth. When the lights were on, with a bunch of young guys and on TV, we didn’t respond well to that amount of freedom. As I’ve said a few times to friends and family, it was like watching six year olds in a soccer game. We all know how that looks — with everybody chasing the ball.

“In practice, we were back-cutting, we were unselfish screeners, and we were curling. ‘I’m gonna curl really hard, and even though I know I’m not getting the ball, I’m going to get you a shot’ and that’s what would help me get opportunities for minutes. Da da-da da-da. Camaraderie, cohesiveness, that ball is moving. We look pretty good. Then, under the lights, there was a lot of ball-cutting and not a lot of screening.

“ So we decided we needed to add a whole lot of structure quickly and we could hold more guys accountable in terms of spacing and where the ball should go and who is screening, who is coming off a screen. But that stuff takes time. We have to continue to improve on what we’re doing.”

White set out further to explain what he’s trying to get when asked more about the change. He’s basically making sure that there is a set offensive call now on possessions.

“More structure, more calls,” he said. “There’s just been more calls… just more rules. This is who’s going to ball screen when and where. When this guy has the ball, this is what we’re doing. You can see it, lot of times it’s, ‘here’s our call, this is what we’re running right now.’ Early on, that’s not—all fall we didn’t practice that because we were banking on ‘I think we can max out doing this.’”

He’s hoping that things will really start to get better here before the end of Christmas break and he is seeing a lot of that. They just need the final execution.

“You go through every season, sometimes you hit in the preseason, sometimes you don’t,” White said following through with the thought. “And I didn’t hit it. I didn’t hit the target in this preseason offensively. Put a lot of thought to it, put a lot of effort into it. The entire staff and team did. That said, with all of the freedom, we did feel like if we have to revamp. Worst case scenario, this can help us become better basketball players, just simply better basketball players and if we’ve gotta add some structure and some sets, we can do that and we’ve done that. It’s not a complete loss at all. Again, I think we’re coming off a game where we did some good stuff offensively. We gotta settle in and make some shots, play with more confidence.”