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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Bouncing Back from a Dark Place: Keith Stone is making strides this season after receiving heavy fan criticism

<p>Keith Stone is having a breakout season in 2017-18. But the young forward wasn't too confident heading into it. </p>

Keith Stone is having a breakout season in 2017-18. But the young forward wasn't too confident heading into it. 

Keith Stone glanced down at his phone as it started to buzz.

Another Twitter screenshot sent from his parents blinked into existence on his screen.

The 2017-18 Florida men’s basketball season had just started and Stone — a 6-foot-8, 245-pound power forward — was poised to have a breakout year following a solid showing in his freshman campaign.

But other than a 14-point performance against North Florida on Nov. 16, he wasn’t living up to those expectations early in the fall. He began this season averaging 5.8 points per game and shot 36.9 percent from the field through the team’s first 13 contests.

Eventually, UF fans took notice and went to Twitter to voice their opinions, which prompted his parents to send him screenshots.

“Honest question: what are the reasons Keith Stone sees the court, much less starts?” Twitter user @RotoGrindersCam tweeted. “He makes poor decisions and lacks coordination and talent. -- Frustrating to watch almost every game.”

Another user, @C_Austin_3, tweeted, “Keith stone aggravates me on the offensive end sometimes.”

Stone’s parents sent him the screenshots hoping to motivate their son. However, the messages only made the situation worse.

For the first time, Stone was subjected to the negatives of Twitter. Back in high school at Zion Lutheran, the Deerfield Beach, Florida, native received nothing but praise as one of the top players in the state.

No one is going to tweet about how bad a high school kid is, after all.

But for Stone — who is near the end of a breakout year for the Gators as they head into the NCAA Tournament on Thursday with a first round matchup against St. Bonaventure — tweets like those began to derail his confidence.

He spiraled into a self-admitted “dark place,” one that he struggled to escape at the start of the season.

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Stone was down on himself and his level of play. He wasn’t as motivated in practice, and his production suffered for it. He held back on shots and failed to crash the boards. On the defensive end, he was frequently in foul trouble by the end of the game. His minutes dipped as a result, and venomous tweets continued to be sent his way by fans.

“I was like ‘Dang, that’s how they really feel about me?’” Stone said about the social media backlash. “So I was like ‘Alright,’ and I kinda lost confidence in doing anything.”

***

The first thing you need to know about Keith Stone to understand why he fell into a dark place is that he is shy. Like, really shy. Like toddler-meeting-a-stranger-for-the-first-time shy. He keeps to himself, minces his words and is very soft spoken.

That’s just who he is.

It’s easy to see that when he’s talking to the media. His answers to reporters’ questions are never more than three sentences long, and it’s obvious that he feels slightly overwhelmed in the presence of those he doesn’t know.

“It takes a while for him to warm up to people,” said John Guion, Stone’s high school coach. “He was never a vocal leader.”

The second thing you need to know about Stone is that he wasn’t naturally gifted at basketball. He had to work for it.

The future Gator was tall and had a nice-looking shot, but that was about it, something that didn’t help him in his first year playing high school ball.

“He was not the clear-cut best player on our team his freshman year, that’s for sure,” Guion said with a chuckle.

While he wasn’t Zion Lutheran’s star athlete, he developed the drive to become one. Stone was at the gym almost every day and spent most of his time building muscle.

When he wasn’t at the gym, he was at the park practicing his game with Guion.

His hard work eventually paid off.

Stone eclipsed 2,000 career points and was the FABC Class 2A Player of the Year his senior season at Zion Lutheran. He was also First-Team All-Broward County his junior and senior years.

“He made me a better coach,” Guion said. “He made players around him better.”

With his bashful personality and accustomization to being the star player after years of hard work in high school, the social media vitriol he experienced in Fall 2017 was too much for him to handle.

For Stone to work so hard to rise to the apex of high school basketball, only to make it to the next stage and fail, was not only a bruise to his ego but also personally haunting.

Compounding this effect, when Stone had a bad game at the college level, he was met with virtual ire from thousands of Gators fans. And as shy of a person as he is, having to face those criticisms was overwhelming.

Seeing so much of it through Twitter pushed him further and further into a dark place, where he didn’t want to deal with judgements any more.

“I’m just a 19-, 20-year-old kid,” Stone said.

***

So here was Keith Stone, just going through the motions early in the season. Rather than ignore what he saw on social media, he started to believe it.

“I had no confidence,” Stone said. “I was worried about what everybody was saying.”

He second guessed himself and became limited in his shot selection. He struggled on the boards and averaged 3.2 rebounds per game through the first 13 games of the 2017-18 season. Stone was also turning the ball over. He gave it up 20 times in that 13-game span.

His trust in himself slowly dwindled with every lackluster performance, and the tweets became more frequent.

“People that are die-hard Gators were expecting more of him,” Guion said. “They don’t see what’s going on. They don’t know him.”

Something needed to change. Just like he did with Guion in high school, Stone decided to start using UF coach Mike White as a resource.

“I just needed to have a meeting with him just to talk to him because we really didn’t talk a lot,” Stone said.

The thing about White’s talks is they tend to work wonders on his players. Case in point, current starting guard Chris Chiozza.

Chiozza was in a similar situation as Stone: not playing up to his potential. But after having a one-on-one meeting with White last season, Chiozza’s confidence became rejuvenated.

Stone hoped a meeting with White would do the same for him.

He remembers the meeting well. It occurred early in the season, where White reassured the redshirt sophomore and reminded him about the type of player he is.

He told Stone that he needed to focus on the little things, like boxing out on rebounds and limiting his turnovers. But the point that really made an impact was a simple one: go out there, have fun and play.

That was when everything clicked. Stone let go. During Florida’s game against Incarnate Word on Dec. 22, that new nirvana became obvious.

“I just played and just didn’t think about anything,” Stone said. “Even though I didn’t play hot, the way people expected me to play, I just went out and played.”

He only scored six points that game, recorded three offensive rebounds and reached the charity stripe five times. But there was something different about Stone.

“He felt really good coming out of that meeting and having things cleared up in his mind,” Guion said. “He came out of that feeling a lot better about himself.”

Now that Stone’s confidence was back, it was time for that strong work ethic from high school to return as well.

He started shooting better and taking more shots. He also started playing stingier defense, grabbing more rebounds and recording either a block or a steal in almost every game after the meeting with White.

Stone knew he was playing better, but the fans didn’t realize it until the Gators’ 83-66 win over Texas A&M on Jan. 2. Stone finished second on the team with 18 points — a then-season high — and shot 50 percent from the floor.

“For about a month now he’s just been consistently very good in practice,” White said following Florida’s matchup with the Aggies. “We’re seeing it more and more in games.”

***

Remember those tweets from the beginning? The ones that questioned why Stone was out on the court or how Stone’s offense can be aggravating?

He saw them. He heard the critics. He understands why the fans felt that way.

He just learned to not care.

Before making the decision to just stay off Twitter during the season, Stone used to reply to the negative messages.

“Appreciate it!!” he responded to @C_Austin_3, the user who tweeted that he became aggravated when watching Stone on offense.

Stone did that two more times to tweets that have since been deleted. This was in November.

Stone hasn’t done anything like that since.

“Twitter is kind of bad, because people who have my @ name could tell me anything, so I just stay away from it,” Stone said.

As both Guion and White like to say, it’s part of Florida’s players trying to “eliminate the noise.”

“I encourage him never to respond,” Guion said. “Stay above that.”

As Stone has continued to play better this spring, those negative tweets soon transformed into praise.

Following Stone’s team-leading 22-point performance in an SEC Tournament loss against Arkansas on Friday, new messages came flooding at his Twitter handle like water gushing through a broken dam.

“Keith Stone is the only thing that matters tonight,” @RealMBB wrote.

“Gators playing like garbage but don’t let that distract you from Keith Stone having an amazing night,” @AviaGridi wrote.

He’s developing into an important player for the Gators and forgetting about his time in the “dark place” ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s pretty great knowing that I can help the team contribute in many ways,” Stone said. “Getting rebounds or playing solid defense on the best post player, anything that’ll help the team win.”

Follow Jake Dreilinger on Twitter @DreilingerJake and contact him at jdreilinger@alligator.org.

Keith Stone is having a breakout season in 2017-18. But the young forward wasn't too confident heading into it. 

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