Todd Golden previews Florida vs. No. 6 Vols, moved due to weather

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After getting their first SEC win of the season Saturday against Arkansas, the Gators have another top-25 matchup with a road trip to No. 6 Tennessee (12-4, 2-1).

The game, originally scheduled for 7 p.m., has been moved up to 5 p.m. due to winter weather conditions in Knoxville. Florida (11-5, 1-2) vs. the Vols will be televised on ESPN.

Here is everything Florida coach Todd Golden said about Tennessee, the victory over the Hogs, the play of freshman center Alex Condon and more.

Todd Golden Q&A

On maintaining momentum:

Golden: “You got to take advantage of playing a good game. I thought in the Arkansas game, start to finish, probably the most complete effort all year. We had an average lead of 13 ½ points, really hard to do. Good moment for us to obviously get off to such a great start and maintain it for the whole game and hard to do against anybody. Obviously, Arkansas is a really talented team. They struggled early in league play, but they’re really good; they beat Duke. They’ve shown the capacity to play really, really well. So, for us to come out, get off to that great start and then sustain it for 40 minutes, was huge for us. I thought that was something we can really build off of, and obviously this is going to be a really tough one tomorrow night, so good to get one like that under our belts before going to Knoxville.” 

On Zakai Zeigler: 

Golden: “Just a stud. Really, really heady veteran point guard. Obviously won a lot of games. You saw what they looked like last year when he went down; they were a lot different. Now that he’s back and healthy, they’re playing at a really, really high level again. Someone who’s a super experienced guard. You got to give him different looks over the course of the game. He’s a guy that, for as good as he is at times, you got to let him try to beat you inside the paint and around the rim and not allow him to spray out and find shots for guys like (Dalton) Knecht, (Santiago) and (Josiah-Jordan) James. They have a lot of different weapons and they have a lot of guys that can hurt you, and he’s at the top of that list for sure.”

On compensating for his quickness:

Golden: “He’s super-fast. You just got to do everything we can to keep in front, whether it’s contained him in the ball-screen coverage. We’ll give different looks, put different guys on him. But, yeah, his speed is going to be an issue for sure.” 

On the pressure they put on teams defensively:

Golden: “We talked about it a lot about last week. I think this is another good challenge for us coming off at Ole Miss game on the road. It’s going to be similar, obviously. Tennessee’s a top-five, top-seven team in the country depending on where you look. A big part of that is their defensive pressure and their ability to really bother teams getting out and pressuring them while also being able to keep them in front and make sure they don’t get any good looks at the rim. Anytime you go on the road, you got to take care of the ball. I think our guys have a great understanding, especially after last week, how important it is. It’s a good opportunity for us to go out and prove that we can improve that way.” 

On UF not winning in Knoxville since 2014:

Golden: “Not a lot changes from a day-to-day basis in terms of what we’re doing. Every game on the road I feel like in this league is going to be a huge challenge for us and obviously Tennessee is no different that way. We talk a little bit about the rivalry, talk about how Thompson-Boling is a great place to play. It’s obviously one of the bigger venues in the league and one of the rowdier crowds in the league. So we’re going to have to be mentally tough to go out there and play really well. I’m excited, though, for our for our team and our guys to kind of get this challenge especially after last week.” 

On Micah Handlogten and Alex Condon playing together:

Golden: “They do a lot of different things while providing good size and rim protection at the same time. Alex is kind of coming into his own as a guy we can count on to score a little bit and play through a little bit. Micah is such a great glue guy for a team in terms of his defense rim protection and his ability to get on the glass and provide second-chance opportunities for us and rim finish. Both those guys are growing every game. You know, I think sometimes because they play such a big role on our team you forget that one’s a sophomore and one’s a freshman and they’re guys that are playing at a really, really high level. Micah’s one of the best offensive rebounders in America and Condo is turning into one of the best rim protectors and rim finishers in America. Guys that can really help us and continue to grow within our program, for sure.”

On whether their roles change with they play together:

Golden: “Not really. We allow them and want them to do different things at all times. I think Condo is going to be a little more of the high-usage guy and Micah’s going to be more of that rim finisher guy that puts pressure on the rim in pick-and-rolls and on the offensive glass. Together with their size defensively, it gives us a good feel that way also.”

On Condon’s day-to-day approach:

Golden: “He’s just really mature and I’d say he’s an elite competitor. I think that’s one area that it’s hard to evaluate from an analytical perspective, how good he is that way. He’s a guy that’s going to come out and give it his best effort every day and that’s something that for a freshman, is really impressive. He’s going to go out and give it his best regardless of whether he’s playing Kentucky or one of the low-major teams we had in the non-conference. He’s just a guy that I think is just scratching the surface.”

On scouting Condon:

Golden: “You don’t know just how good or bad guys are going to be on a daily basis [in terms of competitiveness]. I think with both him and Tommy, they’re in the top 1 percent in terms of their competitiveness. They’re young and they’ve got a lot of room to grow, and they have to continue to get better on a daily basis. As a coach, it really makes you feel good when they’re good in an area where you can only teach so much in terms of a competitive nature and they’re both really good that way.”

On Condon’s background:

Golden: “He comes from great bloodlines. His dad was a really good Aussie Rules football player, his mom was an Olympic swimmer in Australia. That’s a good start right there. And then he’s a guy that played a lot of different sports growing up and I think that’s the issue in America right now. We’re asking these kids to specialize at 11 and 12. When you do that, you can only get so good and I think a lot of value comes from playing different sports and putting different settings of competitiveness whether it’s like hand-eye coordination, physicality, whatever it is. So, he played Aussie-Rules football growing up and it definitely gave him that toughness. Then you put him on the basketball court the last four years, and you see the hand-eye and the different understanding of how basketball works showing up and coming to fruition. I think he’s a guy that’s pretty dang good right now but he’s going to get better especially as he goes through this SEC schedule this year.”

On the defensive effort Saturday vs. Arkansas: 

Golden: “Yeah, it was our most complete game on that side of the ball, all year I’d say, and the two areas that we really talked about going into the game were we needed to improve was our, first of all, just our complete second-half defense. You know, we dropped a huge cliff from our first-half defense to our second-half defense all year. We did that, we were very similar percentage-wise, points per percentage-wise both halves, and then our second-half communication, you know. I think being away from our bench at times we struggle with that, and we weren’t perfect and we had some areas and some instances of plays where we need to be better, but overall I thought our communication was much better on the defensive end of the second half, which led to a better effort.”

On the ideal number of 3-pointer allowed (15 Saturday): 

Golden: “I think between 15 and 20 you’re doing a good job, you know, in this league. We fouled a little too much, they shot a few too many free throws, but you know, you can live with that if it’s kind of errors of aggression and physicality, which I thought showed up more on Saturday than had, you know, the previous week, for sure.”

On the defensive improvements he’d like to see: 

Golden: “I think we need to be physical, you know. You look at the tape when Tennessee kind of routed Ole Miss, and that was a football game. It was really, really physical. And I think Ole Miss was a little surprised in in their first game that way, and then it definitely prepared them to play us, in terms of making sure they were good that way. But Knoxville, like, you got to go in there, you got to take care of the ball, you’ve got to be physical, whether it’s offense, defense, got to, you know, draw a line in the sand defensively and keep a guy in front, but if you bring physicality, you’re gonna give yourself a chance. If you don’t, it’s gonna be a long night, for sure.” 

On how he discovered Condon:

Golden: “Just evaluation. We have a good understanding of what international prospects are out there, and just watching tape on him. A big part of it was we were recruiting a guy that ended up going to Washington State, and they played against each other — it was actually in America — but their two international teams played against each other in Vegas, and we thought Condo did a really good job of battling, going back and forth with that guy who we would have taken here also. That was kind of the genesis of it. Then we did some more digging in and really liked his character, liked what he was about, loved the program that he came from, played with guys that came from there, as well. So, it was kind of an educated, guess is too strong word, but an educated evaluation process. It’s worked out well for us.”

On if he had ever been to that Global Academy:

Golden: “Yes, a long time. Well, back in the day, it was the center of excellence. When I was a sophomore in college we toured over there and played against Patty Mills when he was young and Joe Ingles and Nate Jawai, who played in the NBA for a little bit. So that was going on 18, 19 years ago. It’s been a while. We’ll probably be back over there this spring to evaluate, for sure.”

On recruiting international players:

Golden: “It’s always good to have a blend and a mix that way. It was really important to our San Francisco success. We had a lot of international guys and they all got along really well. I think this team, we talked a lot about going to the Arkansas game, part of our talent is that our guys get along and they like each other. I thought that showed up a lot on Saturday with bouncing back after a tough week and making sure we were really competitive playing for each other. We won a lot of the 50/50 balls, doing things that really shows better when your team’s right, which I think we are and we proved that on Saturday. But a big part of that is that these guys get along so well.”