‘Great bounce back for us’: Todd Golden reacts to Florida's win over A&M

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The No. 3 Florida Gators bounced back Saturday with an 89-70 victory over Texas A&M. UF improved to 25-4 (12-4 in SEC), surpassing its win total from last season (24).

Here’s everything UF coach Todd Golden said after the win over the Aggies (20-9, 9-7 SEC).

RELATED: Live Blog: No. 12 Texas A&M at No. 3 Florida

Todd Golden Q&A

Opening Statement:

TODD GOLDEN: “Great win for us. Great bounce back for us, obviously, after tough loss on Tuesday night. You know, I think this game is a great example of just how difficult and how competitive our league is. Texas A&M, they’re a very, very, very good team. Very good. They’re in the midst of a losing streak right now. But, you know, just going toe to toe with those guys for 40 minutes and seeing how physical they are, how much talent they have, how competitive they are, I’m just incredibly proud of the way we play and our ability to kind of get away from them at the end. But they made it really hard on us in the second half. It felt like we were tightening up a little bit. They cut it to six, Will hit a huge three to take it back to nine and give us a little bit of breathing room and allowed us to keep a little bit of distance away from the second half. But I say it all the time, but every game feels like the Super Bowl in this league, and tonight felt that way. Great day for our program today, you know, just with GameDay being here this morning and our guys getting to experience that, is awesome. Really neat. And then to be able to kind of put the cherry on top of the day by getting a great win against a great club at home gives us a chance to have a nice little Sunday off tomorrow.”

On Micah Handlogten’s lift off the bench:

TODD GOLDEN: “He’s just such a luxury to have back and just shows how much of a winning player someone can be without scoring a lot, right? He only had two points tonight, but he was plus-16 in 19 minutes. I thought he was, maybe not the only, but one of the differences on the glass, you know, to go plus-five on the boards against A&M is like going plus-25 against a normal team. They’re just so physical and so good on the glass that plus-five feels like the biggest win of all time. And just his ability to get his hands on balls on the offensive glass and keep plays alive and create second chances for us, and he just made a lot of winning plays off the bench tonight. I’m thrilled for us that he’s back, but I’m also really happy for him that he’s able to go out there and have some really good success and be able to be part of it with his teammates.”

On Alijah Martin and Will Richard’s 3-point shooting:

TODD GOLDEN: “The way A&M guards is similar to Mississippi State, you know, heavy baseline help, heavy rotation. We throw it in the post, they’re going to double on the baseline side. The great thing, first of all, that we as coaches are recognizing we’re putting some better plans together of how to attack defenses like that, but at the end of the day, our guys are the ones that are out there executing it. And I thought, you know, to have 21 assists against a team like A&M is a ridiculous number, and a big part of it was our ability to get into the teeth the defense, draw help defender, and then make the right play, throwing out. A&M is always going to make it hard on you to get baskets around the rim. They cover down. They converge heavily at the rim, and our ability to play off two feet and throw out and find Will, find Alijah or throw to one of our bigs who made an extra pass for a 3 was a big part of the game plan, and our guys executed very well.”

On the ability to get stops defensively:

TODD GOLDEN: “Yeah, I thought we competed very well defensively. They were hot early. Phelps hit a couple threes. Garcia hit that shot clock three. You know, we had some bad breaks, but over the course of 40 minutes, I thought we defended very well. I thought our guys did a great job on Wade Taylor IV tonight. You know, I thought we did a good job keeping bodies on him, making him work for everything. He still made some tough shots, still was able to get to the line a little bit, but we did what we needed to do against him specifically to give ourselves a good chance to win. And you know, A&M’s a very physical team. Obviously, the way they get on the glass is a big part of their offense. And you know, 15 is not a great number to give up to them on the offensive glass, but percentage wise, you know, to give up a little, it’s not great. We probably gave up 35-36% offensive rebound rate for them, something along those, something like that. But it was good enough, and we made them miss enough, and we guarded the 3-point line pretty well tonight.”

On adjustments made on defending the 3:

TODD GOLDEN: “Yeah. I mean, I thought Phelps hit two really, well I can’t remember exactly the plays, one was, I thought was a tough shot. One, maybe not so tough. And then Garcia hit the, you know, loose ball shot clock three. And, you know, you tip your cap you know, it is what it is. But the keys, where I thought we did a really good job guarding the line, was obviously with Wade, and then with Wilcher coming off the bench, he’s been really, really tough to guard. He does a great job stretching the defense for them. And then Hefner is another guy that’s fully capable to do that. And we did a good job turning those guys water off and making them just try to beat us from two over hands. And you know, there were some times we let him get to the line too often tonight. We got out shot from the foul line by 12 on our home floor. That does not happen very often, but we were able to withstand it.”

On Will Richard’s toe injury progressing:

TODD GOLDEN: “I would say so. We talked about it on Friday, right? Going into LSU he got an injection in his foot, he was a little sore and it took him a little bit to kind of get back comfortable. But he obviously felt good at Georgia, played with a lot of confidence tonight, you know, just getting good looks and knocking them down. It’s what you hope you can get from your senior leaders, you know, opportunity to step up and make big-time plays. As I said earlier, hit big shots that allowed us to get away from them a little bit in the second half. He’s playing his best basketball at the right time. And Denver [Parler] gave me a great statistical nugget after the game: Will Richard passed both Joakin Noah and Al Horford on the Gators’ all-time scoring list tonight. That’s not bad, not bad. They won a couple of championships here back in the day.”

On Walter Clayton Jr.’s performance outside of his shooting:

TODD GOLDEN: “I mean, I think he’s continuing to become, like, just a winning player. You know, and obviously he’s generally really efficient, makes crazy tough shots all the time, makes it look easy. And he’s playing through getting banged up, he gets hit a lot. I feel like he’s doing a good job aggressively, you know, taking it to the rim and not necessarily getting calls a lot. But he’s not allowing that to affect his defense and for the most part, his ball control. And in a game where he’s three for 13, to still be plus-20 and the reality is as the head coach, it feels a lot better when he’s on the floor than when he’s not, you know? So I’m going to keep him out there and let him rip. And, you know, up and down a little bit for guys over the SEC season, it’s gonna happen. But for us to be able to win by 19 when he’s three for 13 from the field, that says a lot about his teammates being able to step up, but also him being able to impact the game in other ways. And I agree, I thought he defended very well tonight. I thought he did a good job that way, and that’s a big area as to where he’s he’s grown this year.”

On the luxury of having big guys who can get down the court before the other team seys up:

TODD GOLDEN: “It’s a big part of what we do. You know, we recruit it and we want all five guys to be able to make decisions on the court. If you have guys that can push it, you know, Condo, Tommy, they’re both capable to do that in the front court. It puts pressure on the defense to try to get organized and try to get matched up and it’s really hard to do that. And you know, they’re good decision makers, Condo’s out there wheeling and dealing, throwing some crazy passes sometimes. But you got to love the confidence he plays with and the belief. Both those guys, they’re just insanely tough and winning players, and they’re obviously a huge part of our team and why we’ve been so successful this year.”

On the team playing through calls not going their way:

TODD GOLDEN: “Listen, our league’s really difficult to officiate. And I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, but A&M is a tough team to officiate. They’re very physical, and we had a great crew tonight. Guys that officiate Final Four’s, and I just know there’s contact on every play. And it’s like, ‘All right, which one are we gonna call? Which one are we not?’ You can pick and choose as you want, but I thought overall, the officiating was good. I thought we did a good job playing through it, though. There was a couple plays where maybe we would have wanted to call that didn’t go our way and we didn’t hang our head, we didn’t not get back on defense, we didn’t turn the ball over. And you gotta be able to play through those things or else you’re not gonna last very long in this league.”

On holding Wade Taylor scoreless in the first half:

TODD GOLDEN: “I thought we did a great job on him all night. Both those guys, their ability to impact at the top of our defense has been a big part of our growth that way this year. Ball pressure, staying in front, making it harder on guys. We didn’t have that last year, the way we do this year. And Mart’s super physical. He does a good job staying in front of the ball, using his strength and Zel’s quick and long in and he does a great job as well. And again, those guys gave us great minutes on the ball and did a good job for the most. Phelps got 16, but we made it hard on him and I thought we did a good job on their whole perimeter.”

On not having a two-game losing streak all season:

TODD GOLDEN: “I’m proud of our guys. They’ve been really resilient, and our staff’s done a great job. Jimmy Dykes, when I first got here, one of the things he said to me, I think he had our first game at Auburn in my first year in conference play, he said the key to being good in this league is not letting one loss turn into two. And I think I couldn’t have said it any better myself. You have to bounce back in this league or else you can catch yourself in a two or three or four game losing streak and you can be a great team and be in the middle of that. And I think it shows a lot about our maturity, our ability to kind of flush losses but also learn from the mistakes we made in those games. And I think it’s a sign of a really good team, especially in this league. I talked to the guys before we broke tonight about we’re fighting for second right now. Obviously Auburn is gonna win the league by themselves, what they’ve done this year. It’s incredible. But we have a chance to go into Tuscaloosa on Wednesday and if we win that game, then we’re in the driver’s seat to get second place. So we have a lot on the line left. We got a lot we’re still playing for. We’re still playing for a 1 seed. Wednesday will impact that a lot. We’re still playing for the double bye. I heard Missouri lost tonight. They have six. So if we get one more win and then we get the double bye. So, let’s go. One more win.”