The No.10 Florida Gators defeated in-state rival Florida State 78-76 in a nail-biter on Tuesday night inside the O’Connell Center, improving to 2-1 on the 2025-26 season. Florida has now won five in a row vs. the Seminoles including a 4-0 record under head coach Todd Golden.
Junior forward Thomas Haugh led the way with a dominant 20-point, 13 rebound effort. Junior center Rueben Chinyelu set a career high in rebounds with 16 while adding 10 points.
Here’s everything head coach Todd Golden said postgame:
Opening statement:
“Really, really happy, pleased. Great win for us in a rivalry game. I think the expectation was outside of our building, outside of the arena, that would be a game for us to control. But we knew coming into this game how difficult it was going to be. Luke has done a phenomenal job in a short period of time, getting that program playing a very unique style that’s really hard to prepare for, and playing with love of confidence, dating back to their exhibition against Alabama, when they took them to overtime in Birmingham, and then they just rolled through the rest of their competition. They played FAMU in an exhibition, and then played Alcorn, Alabama State, and we knew we had a team coming in here that was confident, that was playing loose and free. They have five senior starters and would come in here without being afraid to fail, without any pressure on their shoulders. And to their credit, I thought they did a great job for a majority of the night. With that being said, I’m really proud of our guys as well, still fighting to find a way to get some of these perimeter shots to fall. But big picture-wise, a lot of good things for how we want to play. I thought we did a great job defensively tonight, held him to 33% from the field – a team that was really, really efficient shooting the ball over the first couple games. I thought we did a really good job guarding the 3-point line, held him to 27%, they banked one in. I think they made some other tough ones, but we did a good job running them off the line. And the rebounding was fantastic. We have to be a team that punishes our opponents on the glass the way we play. Plus-22 on the glass tonight gave us a buffer to survive a bad perimeter shooting night to find a way to win. So big win for us. I think hopefully this will give some of our guys a little confidence that are playing some new roles in our program. We’ll take tomorrow off and try to get ready for Miami the rest of the week.”
On Rueben Chinyelu’s performance:
“That was huge. He played really, really well. I thought he bounced back. Hadn’t played his best the first couple of games. Rueben understands and our team understands how important he is to our success. He played really well in the exhibition season, the scrimmages. We know that he’s capable of doing what he did tonight. And I thought he did a great job controlling the boards in his minutes. And also I thought he did a really good job switching onto their guards and doing a pretty good job not getting driven for layups. So a really, really big game for Rube, and I’m really, really proud of his effort.”
On Boogie Fland’s 3s late:
“Obviously, huge. We don’t win the game without them. So we needed a couple guys to find a way to put a shot in. And Boog started it by getting that first one to drop and hit a big time corner three that allowed us to extend, and then we didn’t do a very good job the last four minutes of playing with the lead. Though we had some really silly, uncharacteristic turnovers. Urb hadn’t been shooting the ball well all year, but in that moment when we went a little more ball handling, shot- making capability, and he stepped up and hit a huge 3 to take it to four late. But we needed each and every one of those to get this win tonight.”
On how they handled the press, Condon being doubled:
“Not great. You know, I thought we were a little sporadic and erratic in the first half. We, listen, when you play a team that plays this way defensively, you’re going to turn the ball over some, like, that’s going to be a part of it. But, you know, the ones that we can’t live with are the unforced turnovers, the, you know, the breaking the press, no pressure, throwing it out of bounds, or, you know, spinning baseline and firing out of bounds with three minutes. Like, we can’t afford those turnovers, because this team has the capacity to be a really good ball-handling team. And I think we have to be a great ball-handling team if we want to be as good as we hope to be. Because I think one of our strengths is our ball-handling, our IQ and our feel. And, you know, in a game like this, I thought for a majority of the second half we did a good job, but late it bit us. And I thought early it bit us, you know, we wanted to hold that number under 12, and obviously that got up to 18.”
On the confidence Xaivian Lee’s shots will fall, or if they can get him better looks:
“I think he’s getting pretty good looks. You know, we’ll go back and watch it and kind of evaluate the shots that he’s taking and where he’s getting them. But, you know, I think especially in the second half, we got a lot of good looks and had multiple opportunities to kind of hit that dagger shot that, you know, and to Florida State’s credit, they kept coming back, kept coming back, but we had them on their heels a little bit in the middle of the half, and we got up nine, and we missed some good looks to extend it. And again, I have plenty of faith that X-Lee will start knocking them down. He’s close to a career 36, 37 percent three-point shooter, has made a lot of tough shots in his career, getting comfortable playing off the ball and just being shot-ready on the catch. But you know, I think going back and looking at his looks that we would probably expect three or four makes out of those tonight. So from my memory of the game, I think we’re getting some pretty good ones, and we got to step up and knock them down.”
On defensive adjustments in the second half:
“Yeah I thought, you know, for the most part, we, you know, we held them to 37 in the first half, very well in the first half. I thought second half we did a really good job of going vertical at the rim and making it difficult for their guards to finish. I thought our bigs were really good that way all night. I thought we did a good job staying in the hip pocket of Lajae Jones and Kobe McGee. McGee got separated on one, but Lajae Jones is a really good offensive player. I’ve watched him play four times this year, and he fried Alabama. He was, I think, didn’t miss a shot in the last game. This guy’s a really, really talented offensive player, and I think our guys did a really good job handling him one-on- one. But yeah, listen, I think one of our best strengths is our defensive talent, and I think we have to be a team that defends at a really high level, not just tonight, but in every game to give ourselves the best chance to win.”
On Thomas Haugh taking the game over:
“Yeah, I think he made some huge winning plays, had a three in the second half. And to your point, I thought defensively was really good, and cleaned up the glass, got us out on the break a little bit, started making some good plays, had that lob that I think was to Rueben. But listen, Tommy’s a great player. He’s a winning player. Doesn’t get tired, you know, we were able to, I think he played all 20 in the second half because we were able to utilize our timeouts in a way where, you know, around the nine and a half minute mark we used one, and then we got another media at eight, and he was able to, he only played, like, a minute in about 10 minutes of time where he was able to kind of get himself back gathered from, you know, a physical standpoint, and he just makes winning plays, man. I don’t know how else to say it, he’s out there doing things that make the Florida Gators a better team. And, you know, in that moment, really the second half, we felt like he needed to be out there.”
On Boogie Fland’s performance:
“I thought he played his best half as a Gator in the second half, obviously. I’m sure it felt good for him to see the ball in the net from the perimeter in the jersey. But I thought he was really just aggressive and did a great job finding his spots. I’m not sure how many he had at halftime, but he had double-digit scoring in the second half, two 3s, got to the line a couple times. He was really good. And his floor game, listen, he only had one turnover. When you’re playing on the ball for the majority of the game against this group is hard to do. Four steals, got on the glass. I thought he rebounded really well from the guard position. And credit to him, he stepped up big time and gave us some really minutes in the second half.”
On if he’s concerned about the minutes for the bigs:
“I think it’s a little early in the year to be worried about it. We play Miami on Sunday, and then I don’t think we play until next Friday, right? So we got some time. These guys are young, you know? Now, if we’re getting into the chunk of our schedule, like, I’m not sure we want to be playing these guys 38 minutes tonight. But right now as we continue to try to find ourselves and get really comfortable, we’re going to rip the guys that we feel really confident in, and so we’ll play those guys a lot of minutes.”
On McCray’s last six minutes:
“I think that was a little bit of the flow of the game because we did a phenomenal job on him for a majority of the game. Down the stretch we let him get us a little bit. We were probably a little too thoughtful about guarding the 3-point line and not overhelping, and he started getting some drives and listen, man, I thought our bigs did a phenomenal job of going vertical, making him finish. He was 7-for-15 from two. He’s a beast, and he’s a really talented player. We saw him last year in Jacksonville. And then when I realized he was on Florida State, he’s like a college version of Russell Westbrook. He likes to play downhill, uses physicality. I thought we did a really good job. The best thing that we did with him was held him under 50 from two and also he had a negative assist-to-turnover ratio. And I thought a big part of this game was preventing him from making plays for others, specifically with Lajae Jones and Koby Magee. We saw a lot of their shots came off his penetration and off his ball screen usage early on in the year, and a big part of our game plan was keeping him left so he couldn’t make those crosscourt throwout passes. And again, we had to live with him getting a little more one-on-one looks than we would normally want to give him, because we wanted to stick on the shooters. And so that was just a little bit of a function of the game plan and to his credit, he kept them in it late and made some big shots.”