Why the UGA basketball staff has been along for Florida Atlantic's ride to the Final Four

Akeem Miskdeen remembers looking for players on the recruiting trail that wouldn’t be distracted by the nearby beaches and nightlife of South Florida.

Ben Gonzalez worked out of basketball offices he says are probably a third of the size of those at Georgia with walls so thin staffers held conversations through them.

Erik Pastrana saw small steps that laid a foundation in that first year five seasons ago.

The three members of the Georgia men’s basketball staff were there from Florida Atlantic’s humble beginnings in 2018, taking over a program in Boca Raton coming off a 12-19 season season under first-time head coach Dusty May.

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He had worked under Mike White for seven seasons, four at Louisiana Tech and three at Florida after May talked his way onto White's staff during a lunch meeting at the 2011 Final Four.

“I told him my intentions were not to retain anyone and just bring in an entirely new staff and support staff,” White, who just finished his first season as Georgia’s coach, said Thursday. “He didn’t blink. Asked for a lunch regardless and offered help, offered advice on the individual players and the state of the program and his vision. A lunch turned into an afternoon of hanging out.”

May got the job in Ruston and was by White’s side until 2018. Brian White, Mike’s brother, hired May to take over the program at Florida Atlantic a year after the Gators reached the Elite Eight. Brian was an athletic administrator at Louisiana Tech when May was there.

“He asked me who I thought he should hire, and I gave him one name,” Mike White said.

Now, White has watched his close friend take a team that had never previously won an NCAA tournament game and had just one prior appearance to this weekend’s Final Four.

“It’s been an incredibly fulfilling couple of weeks,” White said, “as we witness the ride the Owls are on.”

White, Miskdeen and Gonzalez will be there Saturday when the Owls play San Diego State at NRG Stadium in Houston for a spot in Monday night’s national championship game. Pastrana may be there as well.

“I won’t rock any FAU gear,” Miskdeen said. “I can’t be on TV rocking FAU gear when we’re trying to get some players for Georgia. I’ll be a little animated, but I’ll have to calm myself down because I’ll have to remember that I work for the University of Georgia.”

White and Miskdeen and Pastrana, two of his assistant coaches, got to spend time Saturday night in New York at the FAU team hotel with May.

“It was one of the happiest moments that I’ve been a part of, to be able to celebrate with someone I consider a brother and his staff who we’re very close with,” White said.

Watching the joy that Miskdeen and Pastrana got during the Elite Eight victory also was gratifying, he said.

“Did I see it coming? No,” said Gonzalez, director of basketball operations the previous four seasons at Florida Atlantic who serves in that same role now at Georgia. “Everyone knew they were going to be good this year. I thought going into the season for sure top five in (Conference USA), really good chance to be top three.”

Florida Atlantic started play in 1988, moved to Division I in 1994 and plays in a gym with a capacity of 2,900. Its men’s basketball recruiting budget in 2022 was $65,893, according to USA Today. Georgia reported a budget of $515,155.

Team travel was done by bus or flying commercial out of Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach or Miami, not charters.

“Basically, at the beginning of the year, I would say ‘Coach, these are our trips, here’s a look at all the flights we can take,’” Gonzalez said.

May sometimes chose to have the team fly with a stop to save $2,000.

May and White are close.

“I talk to Mike White every day, their entire staff,” May said last weekend.

Maybe they miss a day, White said, but he said he talks to May as much as anybody other than family.

Text messages and calls flow between the FAU and UGA staffs.

FAU assistant Kyle Church came to Florida Atlantic with May from Florida and is friends with White. Owls assistant Todd Abernathy was an All-SEC guard who White coached when he was an assistant at Ole Miss. Dusty May’s son, Jack, was a walk-on at Florida under White.

“We’re a big family,” Miskdeen said including head coaches Darris Nicholls at Radford and Jordan Mincy at Jacksonville. “Our whole coaching tree.”

White and his three staff members were in Madison Square Garden Saturday night when Florida Atlantic beat Kansas State. The Owls also knocked off Memphis, Fairleigh Dickinson and Tennessee (AD Danny White is Mike’s other brother). Pastrana and Miskdeen also flew up to see the Sweet 16 win in Columbus.

“It’s been an awesome couple of weeks,” Pastrana said. “Crazy, surreal, but definitely awesome.”

After the Owls clinched a Final Four spot, Miskdeen gave a hug courtside to Johnell Davis, a sophomore guard out of Gary, Ind., one of three players on the team he recruited. He was on staff there from 2018-2021 so he’s coached many of the contributors.

Pastrana coached there in May’s first season in 2018-19. There is one holdover from that team, Michael Forrest,  who played in high school nearby in Broward County and sank four free throws to seal the Elite Eight win last Saturday.

“I think Dusty has done a phenomenal job of retaining pieces and bringing in guys and meshing it together,” Pastrana said.

Florida Atlantic is 35-3 after going 66-56 in May’s first four seasons with the only postseason appearance in the CBI.

“It’s amazing leadership from the top down all the way from Brian White to everybody in the administration to Dusty and his staff,” Miskdeen said. “A commitment to winning and a commitment to the process and not just being content with just 15, 16 (wins). They could have easily said let’s put some pressure on Dusty. No, they were committed to him.”

Seven of eight top scorers on this year’s team are returners and much of the team has been together for three seasons.

“It’s a special, special group that those guys have,” Gonzalez said. “The stability of Coach May, the relationships he builds with the players, they’re authentic, they’re real. That’s really what it’s build upon, guys that love basketball.”

White called the No. 9 seed Owls’ postseason success “encouraging and motivating,” not only for a Georgia program that went 16-16 in his first year of a rebuild but for so many other teams because they vastly exceeded expectations.

“They play a four-guard offense ranging from 6-foot to 6-4 and a 5-man (Vladislav Goldin) who barely played at his previous stop,” White said. “It’s an amazing story. I’m not sure it will ever happen again.”

Gonazlez said holding the players accountable on the court to details every day has made FAU successful, and that mindset is how Georgia can build its program.

“What FAU is doing, I don’t know if it’s replicable any more with the current structure of NIL and the transfer portal,” Gonzalez said. “The continuity, that’s going to be difficult, but if you can get guys that love each other and truly and generally want to be there. That’s what we’re searching for.”

Miskdeen sees similarities between FAU and White’s Florida Elite Eight team and teams at Louisiana Tech with multiple ball handlers that can pass, shoot and dribble and with rim protectors.

“That’s definitely how we want to play and how we will play in the coming years at Georgia,” Miskdeen said.

Added Pastrana: “We’re still in the building portion and we’re trying to lay a foundation here. You get to watch FAU and it’s kind of ironic because me and Akeem laugh about all the times in that first year that parallel so much with stuff here in year one at Georgia. You can’t take anything for granted and this is how it’s built.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: UGA basketball staff helped build Florida Atlantic's Final Four run