In his first season at Louisiana Tech, White led the fifth-seeded Bulldogs to two wins and the finals of the 2012 Western Athletic Tournament finals before falling to New Mexico State. The following season, as a one seed, White’s Louisiana Tech team was upset in its first game in the conference quarterfinals by Texas-San Antonio.
“Anything can happen,” White said.
White will take the experiences he’s learned, good and bad, into his first SEC Tournament as a head coach with the Gators. As an eight-seed, Florida (18-13, 9-9 SEC) opens play Thursday against nine-seed
Arkansas (1 p.m., SEC Network) in must-win mode to try to secure an NCAA Tournament at-large berth.
That means Florida can’t afford to look too far ahead, even though it would likely need to win at least two games in Nashville to get back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble. If Florida beats Arkansas, it would play top-seed Texas A&M on Friday at 1 p.m.
White said there are no plans to extend his bench on Thursday to prepare for the possibility of playing three or four games. Florida would need to win four games in four days to win the SEC Tournament and secure an NCAA automatic bid. The last team to pull off that feat was Mississippi State in 2009.
“Some teams have the luxury of thinking about those things,” White said. “Again, I’ve been there before. I’ve made some of those decisions that helped us and then I’ve made some of those decisions that I’ve regretted in terms of playing these guys only this amount of minutes, so on and so forth.
“For us it’s about whatever we have to do to beat Arkansas, that’s it. And if it’s five guys playing 40 minutes that are playing really, really well, which hasn’t really been us, so be it. That’s all we’re concerned with, however, can we somehow beat the Hogs.”
White’s career record in conference tournament games is 5-4, having led Louisiana Tech to the finals of the 2012 WAC Tournament and 2014 Conference USA Tournament. The Gators will be coming into the SEC Tournament with some confidence restored after beating Missouri 82-72 to snap a four-game losing streak Saturday.
Asked what it will take to make the NCAA Tournament, White responded: “Beat Arkansas. That's all we can worry about really. It comes down to those people in that room, those decisions that they make. I can make arguments for us right now in terms of our schedule strength. Not only non-conference schedule strength but the strength of the schedule that we played within the league, the number of top-100 wins.
“But I think it's fruitless to waste time and energy on any of that. It takes away from your focus on the Hogs. We've got to defend Dusty Hannahs and Anthlon Bell and Moses Kingsley and keep Jabril Durham out of the paint and figure out a way to attack their pressure and all those things."
Florida sophomore point guard Chris Chiozza, who is coming off a 17-point, eight-assist performance in the Missouri win, said players are approaching the SEC Tournament as a fresh start.
“It's a new season,” Chiozza said. “But it's also, if you lose you go home. So it's a little scary, but coach White said to us the other day in the locker room: 'Sometimes fear is a little bit better motivator than anything else.' So hopefully we come out a little scared to lose and play to win. And hopefully we can win four in four days and get to the tournament.”
Link : http://www.dailycommercial.com/sports/article_10065593-cfa7-5fc4-945e-94e24fc47a69.html
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