Todd Golden addresses situation surrounding Mike White departure

Todd Golden is now getting his feet wet in Gainesville with over a week passed since officially being named Florida‘s next basketball coach. He’s taking over for Mike White, who “jumped” at the opportunity to become Georgia‘s next head coach. Now, Golden has to pick up the pieces White left behind before next season.

“Coach White leaving didn’t mean anything to me, to be honest, and I don’t know what he was going through, you know what led him to [leaving], but it didn’t change the way I felt about this place at all, and 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 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,’ … I want those expectations and we’re going to do everything we can to get there.”

Golden brings multiple years of SEC experience from 2014 through 2016 under Bruce Pearl at Auburn. He worked at Columbia as an assistant before then from 2012-2014, then became an assistant at San Francisco from 2017-2019 under current Washington State coach Kyle Smith. Golden was promoted to head coach in 2019 after that move.

This season, Golden led San Francisco to the NCAA Tournament this season with an at-large bid and 10-seed, where his team lost in the opening round to Murray State. Reports suggest he opened negotiations with Florida early in the week and things moved quickly after his team’s elimination.

Stricklin, Florida’s athletic director, called Golden “an innovative, relationship-oriented coach,” that brings a smart and analytics-driven approach to the game and a relational approach to leadership that puts student-athletes first. He also made it clear that the expectations for the Gators program have always been high.

“What Scott [Stricklin] said was 100 percent true when this opportunity became available,” Golden said. “This is this was where Megan (wife) and I wanted to be, and not saying that we thought or knew that we could be here. But just from my time here, loving and following college sports for nearly 30 years.

“I’ve always whether it’s the orange and blue, whether it was the great success coach [Billy] Donovan had — this is just an incredibly special place that I’ve always held in an extremely high regard.”