Todd Golden details Florida's roster reload, pending draft decisions

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida men’s basketball coach Todd Golden has reloaded the roster for next season. After losing four players from this year’s team, he and his staff signed three transfers and a four-star recruit in the 2024 class.

UF signed forward Sam Alexis (Chattanooga), center Rueben Chinyelu (Washington State) and guard Alijah Martin (FAU), all of whom are ranked in the top 200 of the On3 Industry rankings, along with shooting guard Isaiah Brown from Orlando.

Alexis was recruited to replace Tyrese Samuel at power forward, while Martin will be part of a point guard by committee approach without Zyon Pullin. Chinyelu, meanwhile, will help fill the void at center with starter Micah Handlogten planning to redshirt in 2024-25.

Golden is confident about the impact his 2024 class will have.

“I think we’ve gotten better, with the three guys we’ve added through the portal,” Golden said. “Rueben and Sam and Alijah, I think they’re all really good guys, first of all, who will continue to elevate the culture of our program. All three are really good players who are at different stages of their careers. Obviously, Alijah is very accomplished. He’s had a great run at FAU and another great year this year, so I expect him to give us a lot of experience and toughness and some leadership as well. Losing ZP, I think he’ll help that way.

“Sam, even though, he had a very good year last year as a double-double guy, had some really great numbers. A really good rim-protector. We feel he’s got room to just keep getting better. He’s only 19. Really young, but strong, big body. It’ll be a great summer for him here and we think he’ll be really impactful next year. And Rueben is a guy, when you look at his counting stats from last year they don’t really jump out, but if you dig into his numbers and see that he was over 60 percent from the field, a great rim protector, incredible size, we feel like he’s going to take a huge jump going into next season. All three of those guys we’re really excited about.

“And, obviously, Isaiah coming in next year also will give us another young guy right now. We feel like he’s going to be in that same kind of bucket as Tommy and Condo; a little lower-ranked. I guess he’s up to 99, right now. Made a little 60-spot jump over a short period of time. Not sure how that works, maybe you guys can explain that to me. But we always thought he was really good and we feel like he can come in and be a part of this team and help. So, yeah, I’m really happy where we are.”

Florida’s roster is not yet set in stone. Junior guards Walter Clayton Jr. and Will Richard have both declared for the 2024 NBA Draft while maintaining their college eligibility.

NBA teams can start bringing in players for workouts next week, Golden said, and he’ll have to add more players to the 2024-25 roster if one or both of them decides to turn pro.

“Obviously, some things are still up in the air, with Walt and Will testing, and both of those guys are capable of having really good workouts and improving their stocks. So, we have to stay nimble and have some contingency plans in place. But right now, on this date, I’m happy with where we are,” Golden said. “Both of them are training, and they’re working really hard to make sure they’re ready for their workouts.

“But we’ll know a lot more I would say middle to end of next week, and then that’s when like the Draft combine invites start going out, which is a pretty good indicator of how teams are thinking about you. So, it’s a little bit of wait-and-see mode right now. We just don’t have a lot of feedback or information yet.” 

Here’s everything else said Golden on Friday about his 2024 class, what he will do with the two remaining scholarships, Florida’s offseason focus and more.

Todd Golden Q&A

On Alijah Martin playing point guard:

Golden: “I think what’s important for him is just to get more of an opportunity to play on the ball. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to be the main point guard, but we are confident in his ability to play out of the ball screen a little more. At FAU last year – and they were very good, obviously – he was more of an off-ball and spacer, but we want to give him more of an opportunity to get downhill in our ball-screen action and make more plays for himself and others. It’s just kind of the natural progression of his career. For him, to be an impact player at the next level, he has to be able to prove he can do that, so it’s going to be a good marriage for the both of us to allow him to be able to do that and prove that he can.”

On employing a point guard by committee:

Golden: “Yeah, I mean we’re going to be different. I’m not sure that there’s anybody out there like Zyon. Obviously, he became a huge part of our success and a really good playmaker and kind of a leader in the backcourt. Everybody’s going to have to step up and give us a little more. Obviously if we retain Walt, if he comes back, he’s going to be playing on the ball a lot more. Obviously, Denzel will get a lot more opportunity and we saw what he did down the stretch and we feel like he’s going to take a huge jump. Will, even Will, will be on the ball making more plays. Guys will be a little different, we’ll look a little different, but, again, I’m counting on their experience and their talent to take over and be able to manage that.”

On if his 2024-25 team could score just as much but be better defensively:

Golden: “That would be my hope. That’s my hope. Again, we’re going to have to … it’s going to take a little time to get to speed. Obviously, we were pretty electric offensively last year. We were a little better than we thought we’d be on that end and it’s going to be hard to replicate that. I do believe we can take a jump defensively, though, and there’s a lot of room for improvement for us that way. So, I’m OK if we go back a little bit offensively if we can make a massive jump defensively, right? So that’s kind of what we’re trying to tug and push on every day in the office just trying to kind of thread that needle.”

On his strategy of bringing in transfers to make UF better defensively:

Golden: “Yeah, I think all three guys, the transfers that we brought in, are pretty dang good defenders. I think that’s going to help a lot. And we need the guys that have been in the program to improve on that end also. I need to do a better job coaching it. We definitely focused more on the offense last year. That was a big part of kind of the maturation of our program and where we wanted to improve. Again, we made that jump. We went from a below-average offensive team to a Top-10, Top-15 offensive team. Now we need to do it on the other side of the ball as well. And I think that’s going to give us the opportunity to go from a first-round exit to potentially a second-weekend-type team, which is really hard to do, but that is where there’s some room for us to improve for sure.”

On what UF will do with the two scholarships remaining: 

Golden: “Again, I think we’re in a really good spot right now and we can kind of take a step back and kind of see what’s out there. With Walt and Will, that’s going to determine a lot of what happens. If they both come back, we’ll definitely get one more in the frontcourt and maybe a younger guy in the backcourt or on the perimeter. If one of those guys ends up staying in the draft, then we’re going to have to adjust. So it’s hard to really say today what those two other scholarships will be. But we’re just going to be cognizant of what happens and try to get some contingency plans in place if we do end up having one of those guys move on to the NBA.”

On the maturation of his program and guys wanting to play here: 

Golden: “I mean, it’s super competitive, obviously, and with where we’re trying to go, we’re competing against some other really good schools that have good great coaches and really good programs. So it’s still going to be a challenge and we’re not going to win all of them, but I do feel like we’re having a lot of good conversations, and a lot of these guys that we’re talking to have watched our team last year and enjoy the way we played. And obviously when you score a lot of points, young guys are gonna like that and they saw I think what happened with ZP and Tyrese, you know. Both coming in as older guys, being here for one year and the success that they’ve had, which is really helpful for us as well. It’s a kind of proof of concept that you can come in and have success in short period of time here. So yeah, I feel like we’re having some good traction in our conversations.”

On what he’d like to improve other than the defense: 

Golden: “I mean, I think that’s the biggest area to improve, right? And like there’s, we can get better offensively, we weren’t number one in the country. We were, you know, top-15 or whatever. But when I’m thinking of how can we go, I think we were 26th in KenPom, which is kind of what we use, I think we were 23rd or 24th on Torvik, like we’re right there as a top-25 team. And it gets harder and harder to get into that top 20, top 15, You know, it’s easier to go from 70 to 40 than it is to go from 25 to 20, you know, and again, we were not, we were above average nationally defensively, but we were below average for a tournament team, right, or a really good team trying to make a jump. So that’s an area where if we can go from 93rd defensively, we can go from that to top 50 next year, we’re going to be pretty good, you know, so that’s where I’m focusing. I need to do a better job emphasizing it and coaching, but again, it was a little tricky last year when we were scoring all those points to spend time on the defensive end. We’ll do this summer, for sure.” 

On if he’s more inclined to go for older players or if it’s just finding the right fit: 

Golden: “Definitely right fit, and I feel like our nucleus is pretty old and tough, especially on the perimeter, you know, obviously we can’t speak in certain, but like, with Walt and Will if they come back, and we have them and Alijah, we have three really old, you know, like senior guys who are tough and have a good understanding of what winning is all about, you know, so I wouldn’t feel it was as important to go get older guys if we, you know, if we have all those guys back, so like I said it’s like a little bit of give and take depending upon what happens with them. If we don’t get them back then we probably would want someone older. We’ll see how it goes.” 

On being able to land every transfer UF hosted: 

Golden: “You guys know us well enough now. Like we’re pretty targeted in terms of who we go after and we want all those guys to be the right fits. And we’re pretty passionate about selling our program to these guys and the vision of how they would fit with what we’re doing and it’s great to see when they see it also. But we’re not taking swings on guys that we don’t think make a lot of sense. We’re definitely not bringing guys to campus unless we really want them, for the most part. So we want to hit more often than not when we have these guys. But it was definitely a great week for us and it got us in a spot where we don’t feel like we’re in a rush. We can be really patient and thoughtful and it’s more important now than ever, right, with all the transfer rules and everything to try to make sure everybody has a good role and try to maintain a level of competition within your program without guys popping out. And it’s difficult, but I think we’re in a really good spot that way.”

On what the returning players have worked on:

Golden: “They’ve all had a monster spring. It hasn’t been that long. But just kind of their approach and their mentality after the season to get back in there pretty quickly. Those three guys that you mentioned, Condo, Tommy and Zel, first of all, they’re really close. They have a great relationship. They’re going to be living together next year. And they kind of push each other on a daily basis and it’s a tough group to keep up with because they they work so hard. Tommy and Condo and Zel are in there lifting right now. So again they were really important for us to keep because they all obviously showed a good level of promise last year in their own ways and we think all of them will be really, really impactful next year. I’m really happy about Denzel. Just because he’s a guy that had again some inconsistent playing time but really showed up down the stretch when we needed him the most. And I feel like he’s at the point now confidence-wise where he really feels that he can take off and he’s going to be a really good player. And then Tommy and Condo, I think we’ll just continue to grow going from that freshman to sophomore year.”

On Alabama reaching Final Four and how close UF is to that level:

Golden: “Yeah, I mean, it’s good but it was also tough at the same time, because we beat them pretty handily the last two times we played them. I think we beat them by 18 here and 14 in the (SEC) tournament, we were up by 20 in the second half against them in the tournament. I actually texted Nate (Oats) after they made it to the Final Four and I was like, hey, and I actually like Nate a lot and he’s a really good coach, and I was like, ‘Congrats, great run, and it also makes me feel really good about where our program is now’, and he agreed. But it also goes to show kind of the variability of the tournament and kind of how all that stuff goes and kind of how much seeding matters, how important who you play matters and it kind of re-iterated the importance to me of seeding in the NCAA Tournament, you know, for us last year the goal was just to get in, you know we wanted to get back to the tournament and see what we can do, now our goal is to make sure, to do everything we can to get a higher seed to where those factors can go more in your favor, then against you, like, Colorado in our first game was a really tough matchup, they’re a top 21 team analytically, we were underdogs as a seven seed. That’s tough. So we can get in that four or five range and then you are playing against a team that you are more than likely going to be 8 or 9 point favorites in the first round and give yourself a much better chance to advance so it was great to see that a team that we played really well against had success and that we weren’t that far off but also it kind of reminds us what we need to do to kind of take that next step.”

On maybe avoiding the SEC tourney final next year:

Golden: “It didn’t help us as much as we thought, in a number of ways.”

On if he thinks UF dropped down a seed because of Micah’s injury:

Golden: “No, I don’t, because I think they finished the bracket probably on Thursday or something based upon what happened, and again, obviously we lost to Vandy, the game before the tournament which was disappointing but it can happen and we were thought of as a 7 going into the tournament, then we get two Quad 1 wins, a Quad 2 win, we lose in the championship game and we ended up a 7 seed you know so apparently that didn’t matter much, which was disappointing, but I think, it’s just tough to seed in the tournament, it’s a long process and I think they do it a little earlier than you would think, and then obviously ‘Bama loses to us, they go make a Final Four run. It obviously doesn’t matter that much you know how far you go but I think it was really good for our program to make a run in the tournament, to win 3 games, to go to the championship in year two, and to have the guys that are back in our program, have that experience I think is really valuable for us.”

On if he would lobby to have the SEC title game moved up to Saturday:

Golden: “I think that’s going to be a challenge just because the SEC has a good time slot for the championship game on a Sunday, which is totally fine. I think we could do some different things on the front side of that to give the teams a little more time to rest. I think playing four games in four days for us was tough. Obviously, Micah goes down in the last game. I didn’t feel like we got our legs back under us the rest of the tournament. Obviously, it didn’t affect us much offensively, but defensively, not that we were a great defensive team all year, but we were not ourselves in that game against Colorado. And a lot of that had to do with them. They were really good offensively. But I do feel if we could spread it out on the front end. And it’s going be an even bigger challenge next year because we’re going to have two more teams. So, I would be in favor of stretching it out earlier. Maybe a day off in the middle of it so maybe the most you can play in a row is three, as opposed to four or five.”

On whether another conference does its tournament that way:

Golden: “The West Coast Conference did that. It’s unique, for sure. But the other thing you need to decide is whether you want those games to matter for the NCAA Tournament. It clearly didn’t matter this year for the SEC.  And if we want to give our teams a chance for more good wins heading into Selection Sunday, moving it up would be beneficial. But it’s really hard to get 16 teams to Nashville and try to figure out a way to keep teams there for seven days. So, I think it’s an important conversation to have. I just don’t have the right answer right now. To make it better.”

On if he ever stops pursuing a player just based on a talk or being around him:

Golden: “Oh yeah, especially now with the new transfer rules. Guys can leave every year, so you really have to dig in and figure out what the most important thing for them is. And the only way that’s going to work is if you’re aligned. The keys are, number one, that the expectations are in the same spot for both places and both people, the student-athletes we’re talking to. And then just to make sure that the goals are aligned. And obviously, we want guys that want to be pros, that want to be in the NBA. And that’s never going to be something we hold against a guy. But we have to do it as a partnership, where the success of the program aligns with the success of the individual. And when you win a lot, that usually happens. I think you can do all those different things. But there are plenty of times where we’ll be very excited about a kid based on his film. And then you talk to him, and their goals aren’t going to be aligned in any way. So, we just move on.”

On how Micah Handlogten is doing:

Golden “He’s doing great. He’s probably going to redshirt this year. I think that from just talking to him, the number one key in my mind is like his comfort and his recovery. Knock on wood he had a great surgery. Everything at Vanderbilt went really, really well. We were fortunate to get him in there as quickly as we did. And, just talking to him, it would be best for him to know that he doesn’t feel pressured to get back quick, which we didn’t want him to feel anyway. So, when we had that conversation, it was great. It provided clarity to him. It gave him comfort and, in a way, it helps us because before we got Rueben and Sam, you know, if guys were looking at us and they saw Micah coming back, starter. Like we knew it would be hard for him to come back but they wouldn’t really think about well is he going to be back in time or not. Like it was going to be a little bit difficult. So, having clarification on that and Micah’s such a great dude. Like he helps us recruit these other bigs. He’s an awesome young man. But it was good for Micah, good for our program and now he can just pour all his efforts into his rehab and not feel the pressure of ‘I need to try to get back on the court by November.’ My hope is now, obviously not next year but the year after, he should be an absolute monster, you know as he comes back fully healthy with a lot of confidence on the leg. So, you know, his recovery is going as well as it could. His mentality has been amazing. I’m really proud of him and the way he’s gone about it. So, he’ll be back.”

On if Micah will still carry the golden ball, and how he got it:

Golden: “I hope so. I have no idea. You’d have to ask Rachel, right over there, she would have a good answer for you on that.”

On if he gave him the responsibility of keeping the golden ball:

Golden: “No, but it made me feel good every time I saw him walk on the plane with it. He’s just an awesome, awesome dude.”

On how difficult Handlogten’s injury and the fallout was:

Golden: “Super. I mean, it’s just a lot different than it was even a couple years ago. And going from the high of the SEC Tournament to Indy to, you know, the pretty awesome game minus the two-point result. And then you get back to Gainesville on Saturday, you’re like, now we’ve got to figure out what’s going on. So, you come of that high pretty quickly. But it is what it is right now with our sport and kind of the timing of the portal and recruiting and just, you know, I think we’ll get a little time in May, and then August is really kind of like time at this point where we get a little time to get away. But yeah, it’s something that is definitely being discussed amongst our peers as coaches to like, hey, you know, how is this going to be something that we can sustain for the next three-to-five years? So yeah, it’s going to be really hard. And to be honest, as you guys know I’m one of the younger ones. So, for some of the veterans, you know, I just don’t think it’s necessarily what they want to be doing for the rest of their careers. But, you know, it is what it is for now. And we’ll keep making the best of it. And hopefully, you know, at some point there’s a middle ground of sorts, but again, it’s easier to talk about than actually provide a solution for it.”

On having to re-recruit your own guys at the end of the year:

Golden: “Yeah, it’s super difficult. I mean, it is what the rules are right now. And our goal is to have the program, the type of program that guys want to be a part of, which I think we do for the most part, but it’s not always going to be perfect. When you see other really good programs that have been good for a long time losing a lot of guys, you know, and I think it’s just a little bit of the nature of the rules right now. But yeah, it’s not something that we worry about five years ago, you know. It’s kind of a new variable into this equation. But again, like, we can complain about it, but it’s not going to change, and we’ll just keep doing what we can to make sure we provide an opportunity and experience for these guys that makes them want to be here for more than one year. Which, I think, like I said, for the most part we do.”

On what the defensive focal points will be this summer:

Golden: “We’ve got to guard the ball better, you know, perimeter wise, keeping guys in front, and then we got to do better job on the backline, you know, just not allowing people to put the ball in the basket. I know it sounds kind of simple, but those are the two things that, I thought our perimeter defense at times wasn’t good enough. And then I didn’t think we provided enough resistance at the rim a lot. And in this league, if you can’t keep guys in front, and then if you can’t stop them on the back line, you’re going to really struggle. Now it wasn’t an issue that was necessarily only ours. A lot of teams in our league weren’t great defensively. It’s a really, really good offensive league. So just trying to, again, get incrementally better in some of those areas will help us a lot and again, the personnel specifically on the back line with Sam (Alexis) and Rueben (Chinyelu), both those guys. Yeah, so I think both those guys will help us quite a bit.”

On how weird it will be to go to Fayetteville to see John Calipari in red:

Golden: “It’s still weird to see him in red colors right now. Yeah, it’ll be different.”