Florida men’s basketball head coach Todd Golden took the mic at SEC Media Days on Wednesday in Birmingham, Alabama, alongside seniors Rueben Chinyelu, Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh.
Chinyelu and Haugh earned preseason First Team All-SEC honors, while Condon was named to the Second Team. Haugh was also named the preseason SEC Player of the Year, and the Gators were picked to finish first in the SEC standings.
Here’s everything Golden had to say:
Q. Todd, you retain Boogie Fland going into this year. Looking back on when you brought him in, what did you see in him there? How do you feel like he’s grown?
“Boogs, he’s been great for us. When we brought him into our program, he had big shoes to fill, replacing our perimeter who all got drafted in the NBA, coming after kind of an injury-plagued Arkansas. I feel like he did a good job learning from that experience and obviously led us in our back court to a 1 seed last year. He did a really nice job in conference play.
I’m excited for booing and our program to get him a second year. I think that continuity, being able to continue to build a partnership with me and the rest of our program will suit him really well for a successful season this year.”
Q. After leading your team into 16-2 last season, what are you implementing to retain that high standard?
“Our big key was our ability to retain our best players. Getting Tommy, Condo and Rueben back give us a leg up in that regard. Bringing Denzel Aberdeen back has been a huge lift for our program.
We retain I think six or seven of our top eight or nine. We had some real good continuity that way. Bringing Denzel back adds to that.
For us, it’s understanding just because we did it last year, it’s not going to be as easy to do it again. That challenge is in front of us.
I think for myself and the players, we have a goal to win the league again. We know it’s going to be a really hard challenge.”
What is your level of confidence that Denzel will be available with all the legal stuff?
“He’s eligible right now. He won his temporary injunction. The NCAA is trying to keep him from playing, just like any other person in that class, which is a conversation for a different day.
We remain very confident. I think Denzel, first of all, I think he has the best facts of anybody in regards to these Five-for-Five situations, a great legal team that put an incredible argument forward. We’re planning on having him and we feel good about it.”
Q. Obviously the NCAA spent millions of dollars trying to keep these ’22 players, class of ’22 players from playing. One of the arguments they make is that it causes a lot of chaos to let them play. Do you feel it’s caused chaos, the lawsuits themselves? How has that affected how your roster building next year?
“It’s a really difficult situation to navigate. I believe the current standing of the stance the NCAA is taking is the situation that’s causing the chaos right now. I think when you have a rule that clearly states that players get five years of eligibility within a five-year clock, you’re trying to arbitrarily carve out a class to prevent chaos when said chaos has never been shown in really any examples across America or any sports.
There’s a lot of points in this discussion that don’t make a lot of sense to us. The NCAA has marketed and spent millions of dollars promoting the Protect College Sports Act. If that were to pass, the class of ’22 athletes would be eligible to play.
There’s some give-and-take to where that doesn’t make any sense, where they’re trying to prevent them from playing but in the same time arguing that this action passed in which they would be eligible.
The displacement argument, it’s factually inaccurate. There’s going to be displacement next year. I think the biggest thing that I think is kind of confused with this is they talk about congestion at the top and that we need freshmen to be able to come up.
The congestion in the Power leagues is, in my opinion, derived from the transfer legislation. When guys have the ability to be free agents every year, us as coaches who manage these programs have to do what we think is best to give ourselves the best chance to win.
I don’t think it’s that hard to understand that when you have older guys, seniors, juniors, those guys, generally speaking, there’s some really talented freshmen out there, those guys are going to give it the best chance.
As long as guys and gals are able to transfer every year, I think there’s going to be that compression felt.
The displacement argument, again, next year in the cycle there’s not anybody leaving. There’s not anybody leaving with the whole class of high school kids coming in.
I think you can maybe argue next year there’s going to be some displacement, if that’s where you want to go.
I think there’s a lot of misguided arguments and none that make sense to keep the ’22 class out of consideration this season.”
Last year we talked about Denzel leaving, now we’re talking about him coming back. How did those conversations start back up in the spring? How easy was it to bring him back?
“Denzel, as you know covering Kentucky, is an incredible young man, a great kid. When he left, obviously we were disappointed to see him go. There was never any ill will. He remained close with the guys on the team. They were and still are great friends.
As soon as the season was over, he reached out to one of the guys on the team and asked what it would look like, if we had any interest in bringing him back, ’cause he had already had the mindset he was going to fight for a fifth year and get a waiver because he only played 40 minutes as a freshman.
We were excited to bring him back. We thought he would win the waiver. We thought he had a great case for the Five-for-Five standpoint. We had conversations from every guy on our team about him coming back. Not one guy wanted to leave with him coming back. I think that speaks to him as a person, the character of our program, that the guys wanted to have him back.
It’s been awesome to have him back. He looks great. He looks awesome. I think he’s going to be a big addition to our team this year.”
As your profession kind of evolves, how deep into the weeds are you getting into learning things like legal-ease, economy, fair market value, temporary restraining orders? How deep in the weeds are you getting?
“It’s a really important part of our program, so I’m getting pretty deep into it. This legal situation is something that sparks my interest a little bit. My father is an attorney. I grew up around it.
I truly just believe that the class of ’22 deserves to play, especially at this point. Everybody started school. Everybody is in the middle of their semesters. There’s not guys or gals just hanging out there waiting to see if Wisne wins to kind of jump back and reenroll in play. We’re long past that conversation that was taking place in May and June.
So at this point the NCAA is trying to argue that they’re trying to prevent chaos, as they’re really causing it, as Coach Rick Barnes talked about yesterday.
I believe it’s my job as leader of this program to know what we’re up against, what we’re arguing and fighting for. I’ve taken a pretty big interest legal interest in what we’re going through here in college sports.”
Is the way last season ended, is that the kind of motivation that can carry over, or is that completely in the rearview mirror?
“Both, I guess I would say. I don’t necessarily think we needed that loss to create motivation. At the same time I think we’ve done a good job of taking the positives out of it, which transparently I’m not sure we get Tommy, Rueben and Condo back if we make a deep run last year. I think those guys are ready to move on.
That bad taste in their mouth provided an opportunity to get this group together for one last try, which is amazing, a great spin off the way last year ended.
I think we’re doing a good job kind of using that as a learning experience. I didn’t coach well enough in the tournament game. I don’t think our players competed to their best. We have an opportunity to try to get it right this year.
It’s really, really hard to win at a high level. I think just because we get these guys back, it doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to make the Final Four. But we have a better chance. I think we understand that having this group together for one last run is a special opportunity, and we’re doing everything we can to not let it slip or not take as full advantage of it as we should.”
Q. Obviously last year Condo was a First Team Preseason All-American. This year he’s not First Team All-SEC, but he finished really strong last year. What changed for him in February, March? Do you think it will be easier for him without the kind of expectations this year?
“Yeah, I think that affected Alex individually and I think it affected our program as a whole to start last year. We understood we had a lot of expectations. We knew that was going to be something that we had to be up against.
You can’t really attack until you experience it. We just didn’t do a great job handling those expectations to start the year.
Alex I think was pressing a little bit and didn’t play his best until really after the Auburn game in SEC play. Then he played like one of the best players in America the last month and a half, two months of the season.
KenPom MVP five out of the last 10 games. Playing at an insanely high level. I think all of our guys, myself included, can use last year as a learning experience to not allow the expectations to affect us, dictate how we go. I think we can use that to make sure we get off to a better start this season.
I don’t think it will affect any of our players or myself negatively. I think we’re more ready for this this year than we were last year.”