Todd Golden explains where Florida has grown most this season

In his second season as the head coach of the Florida Gators, Todd Golden led his team to the SEC Tournament Championship Game and the NCAA Tournament. He also saw his team grow throughout the season.

Now, Golden has shared where he feels Florida grew the most over the course of the 2023-24 season.

“I felt like we would have a pretty good team.” Todd Golden said. “Obviously we had some kind of fluky situations in non-conference, with ZP [Zyon Pullin] missing the first three games, because he played in Portsmouth. Micah [Handlogten] sprained his ankle in the first play, in the Pitt game. We don’t have him against Pitt, Baylor, or Wake Forest. We had guys in and out of the lineup a little bit.”

Florida went 13-4 in non-conference play this season. That includes games against six different Power Five opponents. However, as Todd Golden explained, Florida hit its stride when it got healthy in SEC play.

“We were good, but we just weren’t super connected yet. We knew we weren’t playing to our ceiling. Obviously started 1-3. Not exactly a great start. When we won at Missouri, then came back and won those two against Mississippi State and Georgia, we started to get some confidence,” Golden said.

“I think we went to Kentucky and won right after that. When we got that win at Rupp, I think that was kind of the moment where everybody in the program, specifically the players, were like, We feel like we can play with anybody anywhere, beat anybody anywhere.”

That win at Kentucky came at the end of January and was part of a stretch where Florida won seven of eight games. Since that win, the Gators only lost five more times, including the SEC Tournament.

“The reality since then is we’ve played really dang well. We’ve lost a couple, but had leads in every game. Obviously coming here, winning three so far speaks to that. Continuing to be more connected. We have a lot of new guys. Riley [Kugel] and Will [Richard] are the only guys that really played for us last year that are still here. Denzel [Aberdeen] obviously was in the program. It’s not that easy to just assemble a group and expect to play at a really high level right away,” Golden said.

“I feel like we’ve done a good job of continually getting better as the year’s gone on. This is the right time to be playing our best basketball.”

Florida earned a seven-seed in the NCAA Tournament, where the Gators will either play Boise State or Colorado on Friday, March 22nd.