A scratch for the 7-year itch: The Golden Touch

“This is an absolutely grand slam hire by Florida,” said Bruce Pearl.

Florida’s new basketball coach comes to Gainesville eyes wide open, well aware that Mike White departed on his own volition after seven years of mutual frustration. Fans expected championships and an exciting brand of basketball. White wasn’t a bad coach, just that his seven years on the job produced no championships, stagnant offenses and double-digit losses in all but the 2017 when the Gators were within a whisker of the Final Four.

There was mutual frustration between White and the fans and mutual relief when the divorce was finalized last week. White departed for Georgia, a school with zero in the way of tradition, a place where a 142-88 record will arouse the base. There’s that old saying if you aim low you’ll probably hit your target.

At Florida, Golden isn’t aiming low. He knows the history of Billy Donovan’s six SEC championships, four Final Fours and the back-to-back national championships of 2006-07. He doesn’t see those as accomplishments of a bygone era, but instead a standard that can still be reached.

“I think it’s one of the best jobs in America,” Golden said Sunday afternoon when he was interviewed during the Gators’ 72-56 loss to Xavier in the second round of the NIT. “I think it’s a place where you can perennially play for and compete for national championships. It’s the best school in Florida and it’s a place where there’s a ton of great players, great tradition and history.”

After seven years of basketball limbo when the Gators existed somewhere between decent and championships, Golden’s words have to seem like a wonder-cure elixir.

The 36-year-old former head coach at San Francisco, where he was 57-36 in three years while competing in the tough West Coast Conference – that’s where Gonzaga conducts its reign of terror while tuning up for another run in the NCAA Tournament – is thought to be one of the truly brilliant young coaches in the country. Some call him a potential Billy Donovan, who came to Florida after two years as the head coach at Marshall then spent the next 19 years transforming the Gators into a national powerhouse.

One of the stops on Golden’s journey to Florida was at Auburn, where he was Bruce Pearl’s director of basketball operations one year, one of his assistants the next. Pearl bubbled over with excitement when asked about Golden after Auburn’s win over Jacksonville State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“This is an absolutely grand slam hire by Florida,” Pearl said, a quote attributed to Tom Green of al.com. “Todd Golden is that next generation of brilliant young coaches.”

Golden says the time he spent working for Pearl was the turning point in his coaching career.

“The time I spent with Bruce I feel really completed me as a coach,” Golden said. “I had a great foundation getting to play and work for a coach like Randy Bennett (his head coach at Saint Mary’s where he was an outstanding point guard) and Kyle Smith (head coach at Washington State, but San Francisco before Golden). Getting to the SEC, spending time with Bruce and getting in on the ground floor of that rebuild and getting a great understanding of what it takes to win at a high level in the SEC and that really galvanized the fan base, really galvanized the campus, getting the right people on board and that hadn’t been done before. I learned a lot from him in my two years.”

Auburn was a perpetual loser prior to Pearl. The Tigers are 124-43 since 2018 with two SEC championships and a Final Four appearance (2019). Florida is in far better shape than when Pearl took over at Auburn so this isn’t going to require a drastic turnaround for Golden although a makeover of the offense would be much appreciated.

In so many respects, Golden is a basketball clone of Florida football coach Billy Napier. Napier plans everything down to the most minute detail, surrounds himself with great people, studies the analytics religiously and most importantly, realizes that coaching is all about people and relationships.

That’s what Golden brings to the University of Florida and it’s exactly what UF athletic director saw in him. While all eyes of the media were focused on Baylor’s Scott Drew and Virginia’s Tony Bennett, coaches who have won national championships and are considered among the best of the best, Stricklin had already narrowed his search from a short list he began forming many months ago.

When Dan Mullen’s flirtations with the NFL in December of 2020 became public knowledge, Stricklin put together a task force of his own people to come up with a short list in case the need to replace Mullen came about. When Mullen more or less went in the tank during the 2021 season and had to be fired, Billy Napier was at the top of Stricklin’s short list and had already been vetted.

There were several inquiries into hiring White after the 2021 basketball season ended. Oklahoma is thought to be one of the schools that offered. Stricklin’s history tells us that was the origin of the short list that ended up headed by Todd Golden. The process for hiring Golden was certainly helped by associate athletic director Jay Jacobs, who was the AD at Auburn when Bruce Pearl was hired and when Golden was added to the staff.

When San Francisco lost in overtime to Murray State Friday night in the NCAA Tournament in Indianapolis, Stricklin had people in attendance. Murray State’s fine head coach Matt McMahon had to be on the Stricklin short list, too, but the guy Florida had pinpointed was Golden. When San Francisco lost in overtime, 92-87, Golden was approached and within a matter of hours a deal was done to bring him to Florida.

There was zero hesitation on Golden’s part to take the job. He knows the expectations but he also understands that Florida is indeed a place where championships can be won.

“It’s a place where you can do that if you get the right people on board,” Golden said Sunday. “When this opportunity came about, I jumped at it as soon as possible.”

Now that he has taken the leap to leave the Left Coast for sunshine, seashells, blue skies and rainbows, Golden’s first task will be to evaluate the personnel he inherits from a team that just finished 20-14. Of the seven Gators who participated in Senior Day against Kentucky a couple of weekends ago, Colin Castleton, Tyree Appleby, Myreon Jones and Anthony Duruji have a super senior season available. Castleton has been playing with a torn labrum that has made him play one-handed for the most part all season. He will have to have surgery and that could make him choose to return to UF rather than declare for the NBA Draft. Appleby and Duruji both have super senior seasons remaining. Of the two, Appleby is thought to be leaning to a return. Jones has two years of eligibility remaining.

Then there are the underclassmen – juniors CJ Felder and Jason Jitoboh, sophomore Niels Lane and freshmen Kowacie Reeves, Toungthach Gatgek and Eijah Kennedy – plus the three signees that Golden is going to have to re-recruit. Of the signees, neither Malik Reneau, Jalen Reed or Denzel Aberdeen have asked out of their letters of intent.

It is entirely possible there will be a mass exodus, but Golden definitely knows where to go get players. His San Francisco roster featured seven foreign-born players and seven who began playing collegiately somewhere beside USF. The portal, Golden says, will be one place he will be looking for sure.

“The game of college basketball has changed more in the last two years than it had in the previous twenty,” he said. “The transfer portal, whether people like it or not, is a very important part of our profession now and our business and, as you mentioned, building rosters. I’m going to do my best to keep the guys within the program on board and get them to continue building stronger as we move forward. There are going to be some additions through the portal, and there’s going to be some guys that are really excited to come play at Florida.”