The first full week of practice for the men’s basketball team under Mike White is in the books.
While the new head coach has a plan to implement a new style of offense, his first job is to evaluate what he has on a roster made up of eight players who have yet to play a game for Florida.
The team is also still getting comfortable playing and communicating with each other.
"I couldn’t be much more pleased than I am, really, from our mental and physical standpoint," White said. "Pleased with the way that our guys have come to work and we’ve gotten better."
White said it is taking some time to introduce his new system and familiarize the players with new concepts on offense and defense.
He added, though, that some things are the same from Billy Donovan’s previous system, which has made the process less challenging.
"It’s definitely been an adjustment," White said. "We’ve been able to keep a lot of the same things in place when that becomes an advantage for our guys to expedite the process, the transition."
For many of the new faces on this team, however, this is all new to them. They are still working on learning how each other plays and getting comfortable playing alongside each other on the court.
Justin Leon, a junior college transfer, said the team’s communication has noticeably improved in the early going.
"It’s getting a lot better. From the start, communication, that’s something that we really needed to improve," Leon said.
"As time goes by, it’s getting a lot better because we watch film on practices from Summer and it’s kind of dead, nobody ever talks, and we compare to now and it’s a lot more vocal."
Along with player communication, White wants to see good shooting in practice. So far, UF's first-year coach likes the effort that he has gotten out of his guards.
He said redshirt freshman Brandone Francis-Ramirez has shot the ball the best so far in practice and sophomore Chris Chiozza has also impressed.
Last season, Florida’s guards shot a combined 38.4 percent from the field and 33.2 percent from beyond the three-point line.
As a team, the Gators hit 43.4 percent from the field and 32.3 percent from three. White knows those numbers have to increase for UF to be successful this year.
"We’ve got to shoot a higher percentage from the three-point line," White said. "We’ve shot it at a decent clip here in practice this early. "It’s got to go up and it’s got to go up across the board, and we’ve got to find at some point here in the next couple months, who our best shooters are in games."
The shooting consistency that players like Francis-Ramirez and Chiozza have displayed so far gives White confidence that his players have the talent to accomplish his goals on the court. He also knows, however, that it’s still very early and that the team needs to maintain its efforts going forward beyond the first week of practice.
"That’s probably a theme throughout our entire roster right now," White said, "we’re very capable."
Follow Alex Maminakis on Twitter @alexmaminakis
UF guard Brandone Francis-Ramirez shoots during the Gators Madness three-point shooting contest on Oct. 2, 2015, in the O'Connell Center.
