Tech faithful eager to see White go to work at Florida

RUSTON – There's always disappointment when a coach who is so well respected at a program moves on to bigger and better things.

Michael White leaving Louisiana Tech for Florida has a different feel.

Of course Tech administrators, players, supporters and fans would have loved for White to stick around for another few decades, but as the wins kept piling up, it became increasingly clear White's tenure in Ruston would be short-lived.

Tech ended up getting four years out of White. For that it is appreciative and eager to see how he does at Florida.

"It's been remarkable. He's a very talented coach. He's a great person," Tech athletic director Tommy McClelland said Friday. "We'll be pulling really hard — I'll be a Gator fan for basketball, there's no doubt it watching to see how he succeeds."

White is headed back to a place he can call home — he was born in Dunedin, Florida — and a place he has decade-long recruiting connections in.

He takes a resume littered with success to Gainesville, Florida. White won 101 career games at Tech with one outright conference championship and a share of two more.

White sits in elite company as one of only a handful of coaches to earn at least 100 wins in their first four years as a head coach.

"You can't keep someone down like that for too long," said former Tech point guard Speedy Smith, who wrapped up his career in 2015 as Tech's all-time leader in assists and steals.

"He loves Louisiana Tech. He loves it. It's the first place he can call home. He has to grow. Every coach wants to be at the highest level there is. A guy with so much talent and so much positive energy and so much leadership, it was time to show the world what he can do with much better talent than at Louisiana Tech."

Smith is able to drop that last line freely since he is living proof of how White made the best of his resources. Smith's only Division I offer was from Tech as he became a part of a 2012 signing class that featured Michale Kyser and Raheem Appleby. The trio finished their careers as the all-time winningest class in Bulldogs history.

Florida's hire of White was met with overall positive feelings from the national media, although the Florida fanbase seems to have some skepticism as to whether White is the splashy hire for the job.

"I know he's going to succeed. I have so much confidence in coach White with what he's doing," Smith said. "Everything is going to look more smooth now. Everything is going to look better for him because he's going to have more money, more resources and everything he needs."

As far as recruiting, White assembled a roster with a $40,000 recruiting budget, the lowest in Conference USA. That instantly changes at Florida where the Gators spent the sixth-most money ($1,416,305) from 2009-13, according to a USA TODAY Sports database.

Part of the knock on White is the zero NCAA Tournament appearances on his resume. Under White, Tech earned the No. 1 seed in three straight conference tournaments yet failed to come away with an automatic bid.

Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley seemed unfazed with that fact during his courtship of White, an opinion Kyser echoed as well.

"I don't think the (Florida) fans know what coach White has done the past four years and all the teams we've beat," Kyser said. "The only thing they were looking at is the NIT. Beside that, coach White is one of the most successful coaches in college basketball. If we would have made the NCAA Tournament, they would be ecstatic and happy."

Even if it takes a while for Florida's fan base to warm up to White, he'll still have his original fan club back in Ruston.

McClelland, who dished out a $3.6 million extension to White last April, knew Tech couldn't compete with a program like Florida, which has won two national titles in the past 10 years.

The next best thing was to embrace it.

"I gave him a hug because I was proud of him," McClelland said.

Connect with Sean Isabella on Twitter at ST_IsabellaTNS