Todd Golden knows that being the head men’s basketball coach at Florida is a pressure-packed position. He knows that the two national championship banners that hang above Billy Donovan Court are the standard by which all future coaches will be judged.
He understands that making the NCAA Tournament as a lower seed and losing in the first two rounds on a regular basis won’t be considered good enough. He understands that his life could become a bit uncomfortable if they don’t win enough games to appease their fans.
And yet, none of that deterred Golden from leaving San Francisco to take the UF job. In fact, those high expectations are why he wanted to take this job. He has national championship aspirations of his own, and he didn’t want to accept a job at a school that was OK with being mediocre.
Golden is embracing all of the expectations that come with coaching at Florida, and he believes that the program has all of the resources that it needs to make those goals a reality.
“At a place like this, they should have high expectations,” Golden said. “Like I mentioned, there’s everything you need here to be really, really good, and, if they didn’t have those championship aspirations and expectations, if Scott [Stricklin] didn’t want to do that, that would concern me. If he didn’t think, ‘Hey, Todd, I expect you to compete to win SEC Championships, to do those things.’ ‘Oh, I just want you to be middle of the pack,’ that would have concerned me. I want those expectations. We’re going to do everything we can to get there.”
Since he’s spent most of his life on the West Coast, he’s made it a point to reach out to numerous former Gators players and coaches to get a feel for the place.
“They’ve all shared the same message,” he said. “This amazing place has allowed them different life experiences that would not be possible without the time that they’ve spent on this campus. There’s a level of pride that these individuals have and that this university has that’s unique and inspiring. It’s a powerful reminder of just how special this university is.”
Among those that Golden has spoken with so far is Donovan, who’s in his seventh season as an NBA coach and second with the Chicago Bulls. They chatted for about 30 minutes last weekend, and Golden plans to continue using him as a resource moving forward.
“It gave me goose bumps the whole time we were chatting because he was so unselfish, so willing to be a resource to me,” Golden said. “He said he was willing to help as much or as little as possible. Talked about how passionate him and his family were about Gainesville and how big of a part that this place played in his life, his family’s life, the maturation of his kids. He considers this place home, and it’s really important to him that this place is great.
“I said, ‘Coach, I’m going to be calling you a lot. Don’t worry.’ I want to pick his brain. I want him to be a big resource for me. He is a guy I look up to both from a coaching standpoint and also as a man.”
Now, while it’s great to have huge goals, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot unless you have a plan in place to achieve them. Fortunately for the Gators, Golden seems to have a good handle on how he wants his teams to play and what type of players it will take to play that way.
He identified three areas of the game as being most significant for his teams to be successful: ball security, defense and rebounding. Offensively, they want to play fast yet under control at the same time. If they can’t get a good look in transition, they’ll slow it down and run some actions to get open looks in the halfcourt.
Three-point shooting is a big part of his offense. His 2021-22 San Francisco team attempted 45 percent of their shots from beyond the arc and buried them at a 35.4-percent clip.
“When you see the type of personnel that we have, you’re going to realize that we’re going to lean in a lot on skill,” Golden said. “Very rarely will we have any less than four guys on the court that can dribble, pass and shoot at an insanely high level.
“The team, I think, was around 30.5 percent from the year on three, and the way that I like to play, that’s simply not going to be good enough. We’re going to have to go out and shoot the ball better to achieve the goals we want to achieve.”
Defensively, they want to force their opponents to do the exact opposite by making them play slow and take contested two-point shots.
Golden said that his coaching philosophy is a conglomeration of the things that he learned while working for Bruce Pearl at Auburn and Kyle Smith at Columbia and San Francisco and his own personal touch.
“Both guys are on incredibly different sides of the spectrum in terms of who they are and the way they coach, but they’re both incredibly unique in their own right,” he said. “I learned from Kyle structure, organization and attention to detail. From Bruce, I learned about passion, how to build a program, servant leadership and just overall excitement in how to galvanize a group for the greater good.
“What I try to do as a coach is take the best qualities of Kyle, take the best qualities of Bruce and the best qualities of myself, put them in a pot and stir it up, and I feel if I can continue to do that over my career, I’ll continue to have a lot of success as a coach.”
Analytics will also play a huge role in the Gators’ game-planning and in-game decisions under Golden. You can expect to see things such as attempting fewer two-point jump shots, taking advantage of two-for-one opportunities at the end of halves and using advanced metrics to determine the best lineups to put on the floor in different situations.
Golden said that his love of analytics began when he was a young child growing up in Phoenix. His dad kept the sports section of the newspaper on the table, and Todd became fascinated with the box scores after a while.
Analytics later helped him carve out a significant role after beginning his college career as a walk-on at St. Mary’s. Because analytics helped his playing career tremendously, he’s made it a point to stay on top of those things as a coach.
“One of the things [the coaches] did was create a system called hustle stats where we statted every possession of five-on-five in practice, and there were about 40 stats that they would keep, tracking winning plays and losing plays, using it as a teaching tool for our team and pairing it with film,” he said.
“To be honest, if it weren’t for that foundation and that system at St. Mary’s, I wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t have played as much as I did. It gave me an opportunity to break in the rotation as a walk-on. I saw what it did for me and the opportunities that it provided me and thought that it would be silly if I didn’t take advantage of that as a coach.”
More than anything, though, Golden understands that a team is only as good as its players. The computers can help you come up with great game plans to put your team in the best possible positions to win, but, if your players simply can’t make open shots or stay in front of their man on defense, the computer numbers don’t really do you any good.
Golden said that he and his staff want players that are not only enormously talented but are willing to put in the work that it takes to win games. He wants guys that have a burning desire to win games for the University of Florida and not just achieve whatever personal goals that they’ve set for themselves.
“I expect my student-athletes as well as my staff to have an attitude of appreciation,” he said. “This is one of the best programs in the country. This is one of the best institutions in the country. We have everything we need here, and I won’t take anything less than guys being super grateful for being a part of it.
“Obviously, I want guys to come and play for me and my staff, but I want them to be passionate about being here, about making this place great, and so, we’re going to go out on the trail and tirelessly look for guys that fit that mold. We’re going to try to recruit the best. We’re going to go for the best players in the country. We’re going to try to build a fence around the state of Florida and make sure that we’re involved with every great student-athlete within this footprint, and then we’ll go regionally.”
In today’s recruiting landscape, the Gators will obviously put an emphasis on the transfer portal when assembling their roster. That’s simply become too big of a part of the game to ignore.
However, what Gators fans might find a bit unusual is Golden’s international recruiting efforts. His last San Francisco team featured players from Australia, Slovenia, Italy, England, Belarus, the Netherlands and Ukraine. He plans to implement a similar leave-no-stone-unturned approach at UF.
“It’s something that at the University of San Francisco was a really, really good piece for us, and we were able to build relationships all through Europe, Australia, and there’s a lot of talented kids over there, and, transparently, not a lot of them have come to the SEC yet,” he said. “You see them in different leagues across the country, some on the West Coast. I think it’s an area that we can go and attack and bring some really talented kids over here.”
When UF announced Golden’s hiring last week, it seemed like a bit of a strange decision. Golden is only 36, has only been in coaching for about a decade and has lived on the West Coast for most of his life. He’s only been in one NCAA Tournament game as a head coach. What could he possibly know about what it takes to win big at Florida, and how could he possibly be the Gators’ top choice?
Well, Stricklin said that he talked to a bunch of experts in the industry, and Golden’s name kept coming up. He checks off all of the boxes of things he was looking for in Mike White’s replacement.
“There’s four things that we value in a head coach: strong character and integrity, that’s a given; the ability to bring highly talented people together, whether that’s players or coaches or staff; the ability to develop a strong culture and lead that group of people; and the ability to put that team in a position to have a strategic advantage and be successful,” Stricklin said. “Todd checked all these boxes and so many more.
“Todd has so many outstanding qualities that make him an ideal person for this position. He is a forward-thinking guy with a detailed analytical plan for all areas of his program. He is bright, engaging, has a magnetic personality that connects with players, recruits and fans alike. He displays an incredible drive and work ethic that we’ve had a chance to see firsthand here in the last 48 hours or so. And most importantly, as I said earlier, about what’s important for us, he is a man of high character and integrity.
“To put it simply, because of his passion, intellect and innovation, Todd Golden already is where the sport of college basketball is heading. For the Gators, that future is now.”
We’ll find out soon enough whether he is the right person to usher in a new Golden Era of Gators basketball.