Florida Basketball: Gators lose big man for the season

Florida Gators big man out for the remainder of the season

As of yesterday afternoon, we have received the news that Florida Gators center Jason Jitoboh will miss the remainder of the 2021-2022 season.  Jitoboh would sustain a concerning eye injury after an incidental hit to the eye during the game against the Tenessee Volunteers.  He would go on to have surgery as of yesterday according to Florida basketball head coach Mike White, which will obviously require quite some time to recover from.

After the injury was sustained in the first half of the game, he would not be cleared to return by the Florida Gators staff and would miss the remainder of the game, and now season.  The issue is believed to be significant according to Mike White, despite not going into what the injury was specifically.  He would make a few statements throughout the past 48 hours, including those in the next section.

At Hail Florida Hail we had just spoken highly of him last month, regarding his game against Alabama.  This news is devastating for a Florida team already struggling at times to be effective in the paint, especially so without Colin Castleton for the past few games.

Quotes from Florida basketball HC Mike White

Mike White would start off stating what he thought of Jason Jitoboh, as well as asking fans for their thoughts and prayers during this time:

"“I would ask you guys to keep him in your thoughts and prayers…It’s significant. You wouldn’t want it for anybody. He’s a wonderful young man. It’s just a really tough scenario for him.”"

White would then go on to speak about both how the team plans to overcome the adversity the Gators have dealt with:

"“You can’t make up the adversity that these guys have had to overcome and will continue to overcome, I’m not sure we’ll be posting up a lot.”"

Overall, it is clear that Mike White realizes the severity of this injury, and believes heavily in Jason Jitoboh as a player and a person.

Implications for Florida basketball moving forwards

In terms of how this will affect the Florida basketball program, it likely is going to end up being a major loss.  As coach Mike White said, they will likely not be posting up a lot, which is reasonable as they are missing two of their top frontcourt players now.  Jitoboh was working extremely hard all offseason to get to this point as well, dropping from 330 pounds to 285, and filling in as a starter while Castleton is out.

With this information, odds are we will be seeing a lot more of Sophomore forward Tuongthach Gatkek, as he is the only player currently not injured on the roster above 6’7″.  The 6’9″ forward Gatkek will, at least for now, likely be the center while Colin Castleton heals from an injury sustained in practice on January 18th.  At only 172 pounds however, this is why Mike white will be avoiding utilizing posting up, as Tuongthach is likely not going to be extremely effective at doing so.  Gatkek is a transfer from Trinity Valley Community College, where he averaged 9.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 2.2 blocks for the 23-3 Cardinals before his transfer to Florida.

Overall, we will get to see how Gatkek performs today against the 10-9 Oklahoma State Cowboys, and how Mike White will gameplan around the loss of two frontcourt players.