Todd Golden WANTED to be a Florida Gator

After seven years coaching basketball at the University of Florida where only one of his teams sniffed the Final Four, Mike White left for Georgia, just a couple days removed from an overtime loss in the Southeastern Conference Tournament. His head wasn’t on Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin’s chopping block but he never really felt appreciated by fans who expected championship level basketball.

White left a Florida program that is the only two-time national champion from the SEC in this century and one of only six in NCAA history to go back-to-back (2006-07) for a school with very little in the way of basketball winning tradition and a fan base that pretty much thinks basketball is what fills the time before spring football practice. In the history of the SEC, Georgia has never won the regular season championship (Florida has won seven) and has only won the SEC Tournament once (2008) and that was helped along by a tornado that shifted the venue from the heavily damaged Georgia Dome to Georgia Tech’s cozy Alexander Coliseum.

That White would leave Florida didn’t surprise a lot of people. The relationship with the fan base was borderline toxic, largely because in seven years he never won either the SEC regular season or the league tournament and only once did he make it past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. That White would leave for Georgia, however, did raise plenty of eyebrows, but it probably shouldn’t when you consider his background. White played collegiately at Ole Miss, another football school that has never won the SEC regular season championship although it has won two tournament titles. Like Georgia, Ole Miss has had far more losing seasons than winners. Perhaps he feels that at a place where the expectations are low and the tradition non-existent he will be loved and appreciated.

Take also into consideration that prior to Florida, White was the head coach at Louisiana Tech, which hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament in more than 30 years. White won 101 games in four seasons but he only got the Bulldogs in the NIT.

White did win 142 games in his seven years on the job at UF, but it seems obvious in retrospect that he was never quite comfortable with either the expectations or the fact he was the guy who followed a coaching legend. Fans were accustomed to Billy Donovan winning championships (6 SEC regular season, 4 SEC Tournaments, 4 NCAA regionals, 2 national championships) so the lack of March success by White never settled well.

There are certain similarities in White’s background as well as those of new Florida coach Todd Golden. Golden was an over-achieving walk-on point guard who earned a scholarship at Saint Mary’s. While he did have a two-year stint as an assistant coach at Auburn, the rest of his career prior to Florida was at the mid-major level (Columbia and San Francisco). White was a mid-major head coach at Louisiana Tech. Golden was at San Francisco (57-36 record with an NCAA bid).

Seven years into the Florida gig, however, White elected to leave for a place where everybody talks about the high ceiling, but reality is the expectations are as low as they get in the SEC. Three years into his San Francisco gig, Golden is leaving a place where he probably couldn’t get fired after taking the Dons to their first NCAA Tournament in 25 years. He’s coming to a place where championships matter and are expected, but this is where he and wife Megan want to be. They see a great place to raise their two small children, but they also see the basketball potential and it is basketball, after all, that brought them to Gainesville.

Championship expectations? Golden made it perfectly clear at his introductory press conference at the O-Dome that he embraces the high expectations. Golden also let it be known that if Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin didn’t have championship expectations he wouldn’t have taken the Florida coaching job.

“Honestly, 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 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.”

Comparisons to Billy Donovan come with the territory. It took Alabama 25 years to find a coach (Nick Saban) who was comfortable with the ghost of Bear Bryant in the building. At Kentucky, where four different coaches have won a national championship since Adolph Rupp retired. Every one of them is just another coach until they’ve matched Rupp’s four. Since John Wooden retired at UCLA, there has been only one national championship. Every coach who takes that job knows he will be measured against Wooden’s 10 national championships in 12 years.

There is no ghost for Golden to chase at Florida. Donovan is still very much alive and though he coaches the Chicago Bulls in the NBA, he still considers Gainesville his home. His dad, Bill Sr., was at Golden’s press conference Wednesday. If there is even a slight amount of intimidation, then it certainly wasn’t evident.

Golden and Donovan have already spoken on the phone and Donovan made it perfectly clear, he’s ready to help.

“I was able to talk to Coach Donovan last Saturday for about 30 minutes, and 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, and he said you don't have to worry about me. 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. Everything I hear from others is how great of a person he is.”

Golden’s plan for the Gators sounds a lot like the one that was the foundation for Donovan at UF for 19 years: play defense at an elite level, rebound the basketball, score on layups in transition and knock down a lot of 3-pointers. Wednesday, Golden made sure everybody heard that last year’s 30.3 percent shooting on 3-pointers is completely unacceptable. When the Gators can’t score in transition, they’ll slow the ball down, spread the floor and run a half-court offense where players and the ball are constantly moving. There will be great emphasis on protecting the basketball, something the Gators haven’t done very well the last couple of years (728 assists, 798 turnovers).

To make that work, Golden plans to use every means at his disposal to bring in players who are good fits for the style he plans to run. He will re-recruit players on the current roster including Colin Castleton, who could use a super senior year, go to the transfer portal to bring in plug and play types who can fit instantly and also recruit internationally. It’s all part of building a foundation for success that equals the expectations of the fan base.

“You should expect to see a big, strong, deep roster that has a lot of skilled and unselfish players that are willing to put the team in front of themselves,” Golden said.

Stricklin and his staff had a short list of potential coaches to work with when White departed – some of them high profile veterans and some up and coming young coaches like Golden (age 36). There was ample interest in the Florida job, but the one coach who kept checking all the right boxes was Golden.

“As everyone is aware, there were no shortage of job openings at high major schools during this recent coaching cycle, including several in the SEC,” Stricklin said. “One thing I would like to share with Gator Nation, all the fans listening out there, because I think it's important, Todd wanted to be a Florida Gator. This was a place that he valued as much as we valued him. He shares our goals and our aspirations to win championships at the University of Florida.”

Golden still hasn’t coached a game or recruited a player. He still has to fill out his coaching staff, hire analysts and a director of basketball operations. He has to hit the recruiting trail hard because the Gators could lose up to six seniors plus the underclassmen have the option of the transfer portal.

There are only 24 hours in the day and Todd Golden might need 30 to accomplish each day’s tasks, but do understand one thing. He wants to be here. He wants to be a Gator and he loves the high expectations.