‘Felt like a Sweet 16 game’: Todd Golden reacts to UF's win over Missouri

NASHVILLE — No. 4 Florida advanced to the SEC Tournament semifinal on Friday with their 95-81 win over No. 21 Missouri. Four UF players scored in double figures and the Gators improve to 4-1 vs. Missouri under Todd Golden.

Here’s everything Golden said after the win over the Tigers.

RELATED: Takeaways from Florida Gators’ 95-81 win over Missouri

Opening statement

TODD GOLDEN: “Really proud of our group. Great win. Obviously a couple areas. We weren’t at our best on the glass today. We were not at our best taking care of the basketball. But we did a lot of great things as well. Really efficient. 61% from the field is incredible. Our guys did a great job of putting the ball in the basket. I thought we did a good job of executing the scout in terms of out of personnel. A big thing tonight was limiting (Caleb) Grill’s ability to get threes off as well as 35, Crews. We limited them from the three-point line. We thought that would be a winning formula for us. At this time of year, playing a team like Missouri in the quarterfinals, they’re a very good team. I think they have a chance to make a run. Dennis has done a good job this year. Proud of this win, playing in the quarters of the SEC Championship. Felt like a Sweet 16 game tonight. Two teams that could do a really good job in March Madness next week.”

On how gratifying was it to put it together down the stretch: 

TODD GOLDEN: “It was very gratifying to win the basketball game.”

On Florida’s improved three-point defense compared to its Jan. 14 contest with Missouri: 

TODD GOLDEN: “Again, in the first game, we did not play very well. I didn’t think we came out with the aggressiveness we needed to perform well. Tonight we obviously made a clear emphasis to try to limit their three-point shooting, specifically 31, Grill, 35, Crews.  We thought if we limited their attempts that we’d be in really good shape or give ourselves the best chance to win.  We did do that. We held them — I think they were 0-4 combined in the first half. Grill got going in the second half with a couple big shots. We fouled him on one three-point attempt. We wanted them to try to beat us inside the three-point line. A part that did not help us that way was our inability to get rebounds defensively tonight. They scored better than we would have hoped. Limiting their three-point shots definitely gave us the best chance to win tonight, and our guys did a great job of taking that away from them.”

On the offensive rebounding discrepancy, how much of that factored into the amount of shots they missed:

TODD GOLDEN: “Still they got 18 offensive rebounds. We had 23 defensive rebounds. That’s not a very good percentage. For us, I guess it was kind of the same. Neither team did a good enough job keeping the opponents off the offensive glass. We talked about it with our guys after the game, that’s an area for us that has been good all year. For us to advance as far as we want, we have to get back to that being a big advantage. Missouri, they’re really tough to prepare for. I think Dennis does a great job of kind of making the game difficult to coach. They run a lot of different defenses. They put so much pressure on you offensively. They just kind of make the game chaotic at times, which obviously wasn’t great for us in terms of our ability to take care of the ball or limit them on the offensive glass. Big picture-wise, getting back on the glass, taking care of the ball is what we need to do if we want to make a deep run.”

On the balance between playing fast and not getting hurried, what Missouri did to speed Florida up more than it wanted to:

TODD GOLDEN: “We were definitely, like, pretty jacked up for this ballgame. Anytime we get a miss, we want to play fast, get the ball up the floor, kind of play out of our early game, transition offense.  I think an area where we did a poor job was being organized after made baskets. We had a couple different guys taking outlets. We weren’t getting our spacing right, getting set. We had some careless and uncharacteristic turnovers. We stepped out-of-bounds twice in the corner.  Back foot, one-handed passes. Things we generally do a really good job of we just didn’t do a good enough job of tonight.”

On Thomas Haugh’s performance: 

TODD GOLDEN: “Yeah, he was fantastic. I thought he did a great job. First of all, knocking his free throws down. This game, they were downsizing for sure. Not having Mitchell, they tried to spread us out and kind of put us in precarious positions defensively. Tommy is a front court player that can switch, that can keep guards in front. For him, in these types of games, it’s more opportunistic to have him on the floor. He did a great job defensively. I thought he did a great job cleaning the glass in the second half. Offensively for the most part he had a couple uncharacteristic turnovers. The high-lows he usually completes all the time. He was sped up. He’s such a winning player. You want to keep him out there, see different ways for him to impact the game. Again, the defensive versatility, his ability to rebound, his ability to make free throws. I think he’s shooting like 85% from the foul line this year. It’s really impacted his growth as a player and obviously made us much better.”