Florida’s Me’Arah O’Neal returns to a familiar place in loss to LSU
As is the case with most in the shadow, Me’Arah O’Neal sought elsewhere. Even then, there are moments you find yourself back where it all started.
Choosing between swamps, The Big Diesel’s daughter — that’s what you know her as, though not necessarily how she wants to be known — was the 33rd-ranked recruit in the 2024 class (ESPN). Offers rained, but she settled on Florida over other finalists, like LSU. The Gators had only made two NCAA Tournament appearances in the last decade. LSU, under the direction of one of women’s basketball’s most polarizing coaches, Kim Mulkey, won a national championship three seasons ago.
The outside expectation was that if Shaq’s alma mater came calling, she would be off the market before another coach could even make a call. Her decision, then, was surprising. But she prefers a different descriptor: effortless.
“I didn’t want to do that,” she said after practice this week. “I didn’t want to say it was because of him. I wanted to make my own path, and I didn’t necessarily want to follow or fulfill what he did.”
In Gainesville, the shadow lifted. But on Monday, she returned to the place she ran away from not too long ago. Florida (13-8, 1-5 SEC) lost to No. 6 LSU 89-60 on Monday, continuing to reel as the SEC calendar draws into its second, and final, full month. If Florida hopes to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2022, conference wins are a necessary addition to the resume.
Against the very Tigers she knows so well, O’Neal expected to be at the forefront of the Gators’ effort to right the ship before time passed, having scored double digits in Florida’s last four contests. A three-point evening was unexpected. But, even then, because of her decision — her commitment to UF — she has never felt better.
“She’s had hard moments,” fellow sophomore Liv McGill said earlier this season. “But now, when she has these hard moments this season, she’s able to overcome them just because she’s gotten stronger mentality-wise.”
She’ll tell you she was in her head. You were the star in high school, the daughter of one of the most recognizable and best NBA players ever. Scoring came as easily as Snapchatting in those days. But then you arrived at a Power Four school and averaged 4.8 points per game on the fewest minutes she’d ever played per game in her life. Of course, her confidence was shaken.
Then she turned to the coaching staff she bought into, the one that sold her on spurning the school essentially everyone assumed she would end up at since, like, birth. And this offseason, everything started to roll. “They’re selfless, always caring,” she says now of that coaching staff. They infused confidence in her and challenged her.
“‘Do yourself,’” they said, and so she followed orders. She can’t thank them enough: “They accept you as a person, and they’re not trying to change you.”
This version of Me’Arah is one who knows the player she is, even in down outings like Monday’s, which was why she came to Florida in the first place, not LSU. She wanted to be herself, away from Shaq’s shadow, as hard as it might be for anyone to avoid it.
And the numbers returned, for the most part. She’s Florida’s second-leading scorer at 14 points per game, and paces Florida with seven boards, more than a rebound more per game than any other Gator. She’s raking in weekly accolades, like SEC co-Player of the Week, which she earned a couple of weeks ago after a 22-point night. “You think I’ve gotten better at assists?” she asked assistant coach Jackie Moore, breaking up her inventory of ways she’s improved. The response couldn’t come quickly enough. “Yes, you’re one of our better passers.”
So her game is rounding out, too, and the WNBA aspirations grow more realistic.
“I just think that she is a testament to total and complete buy-in,” Florida coach Kelly Rae Finley said earlier this year. “She worked every single day. She was focused; she was bought in. … [It’s] just the tip of the iceberg.”
The next step is her leadership — how vocal she is, specifically. Florida wants her to become a central figure in its climb from SEC irrelevance, which she wasn’t against the Tigers.
Thus, the ascent didn’t start at LSU, a team Florida has only beaten once since Mulkey’s arrival. But when Florida gets over that hump, as O’Neal said the Gators will, the emotions are sure to populate.
“I’ve never been happier.”
