Todd Golden recaps the Florida Gators' secret scrimmage vs. FIU

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida Gators held their first of two preseason scrimmages on Saturday against FIU. Todd Golden’s team defeated the Panthers, 80-49, in the O’Dome.

UF will have another scrimmage at home Saturday against Charleston. It will be the Gators’ final tune-up before their Nov. 4 season opener against South Florida in Jacksonville.

Sophomore forward Alex Condon, a preseason All-SEC selection, did not play in the first scrimmage due to a sore knee, but Golden said he should be able to play against Charleston.

“Final result was good, but a lot of things throughout the course of the scrimmage, I feel like we can clean up, and fortunately we get another opportunity on Saturday to kind of right those things,” Golden said. “I thought our defense was solid, we held them to a good number. And then offensively, I thought big picture we were doing a lot of good things.”

Senior guard Walter Clayton Jr., a first-team preseason All-SEC pick, ran point for the Gators following the departure of Zyon Pullin. Golden credited Clayton for taking care of the ball and said he wants him to play the position similarly to New York Knicks PG Jalen Brunson.

“A guy that we’ve talked to him a lot is Jalen Brunson and how he plays with the New York Knicks, in terms of getting off the ball and running different zoom actions, or little pin downs to get him back on the ball. He’s been very receptive to the way we want him to run the offense, and a big part of it is we’ve given him a lot of freedom to decision make out there in terms of what we’re running,” Golden said.

“He played very well offensively (in the scrimmage). He had a great assistant-to-turnover ratio. He was efficient from the floor. … It was a great test because it was a team that pressured a ton. They were in full-court press a lot, half court trying to bother us in ball screens, trying to take us out of our initial starts to the offense. They were a really good opponent for that … and he did a good job handling it on Saturday.”

Golden was also pleased the Gators forcing turnovers — something they struggled to do on defense last season (10.8 turnovers per game, 13th in turnover margin) — and the play of transfer center Rueben Chinyelu, who was the team’s best rebounder and avoided foul trouble.

“We didn’t force any turnovers (last season). That was a big issue for us,” Golden said. “We did not turn teams over, which kind of made our margin for error pretty small. … I think this year we’re just playing kind of more of a pressure style defensively, bothering the ball, bothering passing lanes, making it harder for the opponent to operate. So that’s kind of our goal. We were pretty successful that way on Saturday; we turned them over quite a bit, but Charleston will present another challenge.”

Golden was not happy with Florida’s overall rebounding performance and lack of physicality against FIU. He acknowledged that Condon being out was a contributing factor and hurt the frontcourt depth, but it will be addressed in practice this week before the next scrimmage.

“I would say we were disappointed with how we rebounded,” Golden said. “Our rebounding was poor to be honest. We did not rebound well and that was one thing that I feel like we could pull from that scrimmage on Saturday and really work on this week. We know that we have to be a good rebounding team to be the best we can be.

“We need to remember why we got good last year and a big part of that is we were very physical and we kind of wore teams down as the game went on. Alex Condon didn’t play … but we’ve got to be able to have not one of those guys and still maintain the identity of our team. It’s something we’re working on and addressing this week.”

we’ll let you in on the secret 😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/OHQxF1Ql7c

— Florida Gators Men’s Basketball (@GatorsMBK) October 20, 2024

Here’s everything Todd Golden said during his Monday press conference.

Todd Golden Q&A

On the first scrimmage:

TODD GOLDEN: “Yeah, overall pleased, I guess. But at the same time, I feel like great teaching tape and a lot to work on, as well. Final result was good, but a lot of things throughout the course of the scrimmage, I feel like we can clean up, and fortunately we get another opportunity on Saturday to kind of write those things – big-picture wise. I thought our defense was solid, we held them to a good number. And then offensively, I thought big picture we were doing a lot of good things. We didn’t necessarily execute perfectly. The glass was discouraging, and that’s something that we got to make sure we take care of. As you guys know, that was a big part of our success last year. So, we got to maintain that. Alex didn’t play, Condon, just kind of had a little knee soreness. I think he should be able to go on Saturday this week – we’ll play that by ear. But overall, good starting point. But again, more excited about the tape that we were able to get out of there and be able to talk to the guys about yesterday.”

On the Florida Gators being No. 21 in the preseason rankings:

TODD GOLDEN: “Honestly, we’ve talked about it with our guys quite a bit. We’re appreciative of the respect and are thankful that people are recognizing us that way. But at the same time for what we’re trying to do and where we’re trying to go, it really doesn’t mean much in the big picture – so great starting point. Again, to be in this league and think we got picked six, which is a little bit of a compliment – it’s a great league with 16 teams now. But starting point and long-term goals are two completely different things. Now the expectations are higher. It’s a good thing; you want that. When you’re good, your expectations are gonna be high. But we gotta continue to get better, and by the end of the year, our goal is to finish higher than 21st or 22nd.”

On the momentum generated from a preseason ranking:

TODD GOLDEN: “It’s being recognized for the growth in our program so far. Being able to retain a good portion of our nucleus, and then bringing in guys like Alijah, Sam and Rueben. I think people feel like we have a solid roster, which I think we do. Now we just have to go out and take advantage of it.”

On if UF is ahead of schedule defensively:

TODD GOLDEN: “We’re definitely ahead of last year. I think we’re further along for sure. In our one opportunity against somebody else, we played pretty well on that end. But we’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on it as well. So I would say where we want to be and Saturday, Charleston, the team we scrimmage, is a very good offensive team. I think they had a lot of really good success in their first scrimmage scoring the ball. So that’ll be a different test for us on the defensive side of the ball. So it’ll be interesting to see how we perform on Saturday.”

On Florida’s defensive issues last season:

TODD GOLDEN: “Two things. No. 1, we didn’t force any turnovers. That was a big issue for us. You can play defense a bunch of different ways. You can be really aggressive, get in the passing lanes and try to force turnovers. We were a little more packed in, trying to protect the paint last year. But we did not turn teams over, which kind of made our margin for error pretty small. We fouled a little too much, which hurt us that way. And we weren’t an elite two-point field goal defense. So those three things kind of made us not great in this league, and generally, if you foul a lot, at least in our league, teams that foul a lot generally protect the rim really well. There’s a reason why they might be fouling a little more; they’re not going to be easy basket. So we didn’t really have anything to kind of hang our hat on on that end, where I think this year we’re just playing kind of more of a pressure style defensively, bothering the ball, bothering passing lanes, making it harder for the opponent to operate. So that’s kind of our goal. Again, we were pretty successful that way on Saturday; we turned them over quite a bit, but Charleston will present another challenge, and we’ll be able to see how we do against the team that kind of spreads it out a little more.” 

On how Alijah Martin impacts the defense:

TODD GOLDEN: “A lot. He’s really important to us. With that first group that’ll start barring any injuries, which on the perimeter is Will, Alijah and Walt. He’ll be the guy that primarily picks up the ball and guards the ball. He’s got great, quick feet. He’s strong, can keep a guy in front, can really operate getting over a ball screen defensively. So he gives us another element on that end. And I think Denzel is another guy that can do that as well. And, honestly, Walt and Will have both improved that way. But it’s probably not we want Walt to have to do for 34 minutes a game if he’s also leading the team offensively and using a lot of possessions. Those guys kind of give us the ability to play different rotations and play a little more pressure on the defensive end.”

On Walter Clayton Jr.’s performance at point guard:

TODD GOLDEN: “He played well. He played very well offensively. He had a great assistant-to-turnover ratio. He was efficient from the floor. I don’t think I can give like exact numbers of what he did, but he was good. He was very good that way. We took care of the ball. It was a great test because it was a team that pressured a ton. They were in full-court press a lot, half court trying to bother us in ball screens, trying to take us out of our initial starts to the offense. They were a really good opponent for that, trying to see what we could get in that regard out of Walt, and he did a good job handling it on Saturday.”

On Clayton being more of score-first PG than Zyon Pullin:

TODD GOLDEN: “I think ZP honestly was score-first also. He was more ball dominant and so he ended up in a good amount of assists but he averaged 17 points per game, you know, he was really effective scoring the ball, in terms of Walt, I think Walt, he gets it out of his hands a little bit quicker, ZP wanted to always kind of orchestrate the offense, and if we didn’t have anything in transition he would kind of get us organized, Walt is very willing throwing the ball ahead, getting himself off the ball, a guy that we’ve talked to him a lot is Jalen Brunson and how he plays with the New York Knicks, in terms of getting off the ball and running different zoom actions, or little pin downs to get him back on the ball but again he’s been very receptive to the way we want him to run the offense and a big part of it is we’ve given him a lot of freedom to decision make out there in terms of what we’re running, I talked to him yesterday, I want him to, we’ll equate it to football, have that relationship where we give him the play call but if he gets up to the line of scrimmage and sees something else we want to give him the ability to check out of what we’re running and run something else and if he can do that and command the offense and make sure everyone is on the same page we have chance to be really, really good.

On rim protection and rebounding against FIU:    

TODD GOLDEN: “Rim protection pretty good, I thought we did a good job guarding the 2, our rebounding was poor to be honest, we did not rebound well and that was one thing that I feel like we could pull from that scrimmage on Saturday and really work on this week. We know that we have to be a good rebounding team to be the best we can be. We don’t want to rely upon a great effective field goal percentage, or an elite first shot defense night to win games, we need to have that margin for error on the glass to where we buy ourselves a couple of extra possessions or points. So I would say we were disappointed with how we rebounded and it’s definitely an emphasis this week in practice.”

On Florida’s physicality against FIU:

TODD GOLDEN: “Not good enough to be honest, we need to remember why we got good last year and a big part of that is we were very physical and we kind of wore teams down as the game went on. I think we wore our opponents down but we also can’t get too comfortable that we’re going to be so good offensively that we don’t need to be that way. I think we need to be elite offensively while maintaining that physicality and part of it was, I don’t know if you were here earlier but Alex Condon didn’t play, he was out with a sore knee so we didn’t have as much depth in the frontcourt. I think that might have been part of it, but we’ve got to be able to have not one of those guys and still maintain the identity of our team. It’s something we’re working on and addressing this week.”

On the issue with rebounding vs. the Panthers:

TODD GOLDEN: “They got too many of them.”

On what led to those results:

TODD GOLDEN: “A little bit of everything to be honest. We didn’t block out well enough, we weren’t quick enough to the ball. FIU is a very quick team, they are very quick, they are a little undersized, but sometimes when you play against teams, like their four-man was 6-5, 6-6, but he moves like a guard. For Sam Alexis for example, when he’s playing SEC opponents, he’s probably going to be blocking out someone that’s 6-8, 220 or something he’s going to be able find the body and get him. This guy was running around us and that was kind of consistent most of the first half. I think we kind of righted it the second half but you know playing different opponents like that presents different challenges. I didn’t think we blocked out well enough our guards didn’t come down and rebound well enough on our perimeter and we just weren’t nails in that regard. The great thing is we won comfortably but I think we were able to explain to our team that against certain opponents this might be OK but if we want to be the best team we can be, we can’t perform like that.”

On the offensive glass:

TODD GOLDEN: “We were OK on the offensive glass. We wanted to have a plus 10% delta on the glass against a team like FIU, and they beat us on the glass. We just kind of look at it big picture that way, like we weren’t good enough on the offensive glass, we weren’t good enough on the defense glass. Definitely an area where we focus and try to beat Charleston this week.”

On Rueben Chinyelu avoiding foul trouble:

TODD GOLDEN: “He did a great job. He played 26 minutes and wasn’t in foul trouble at all. That’s been a concern from his season last year coming into this year, and in practice we don’t get real officials a lot, usually it’s me and Taurean Green out there officiating. He’s a very physical player, so you wonder once you get into competition, what’s that going to look like? But he did a great job, to be honest. He was our best rebounder, he didn’t pick up any silly fouls, everything he did was really good and mindful to not put himself in that situation. I think he played 26 minutes or something along those lines out of 40, and to only pick up three fouls, that was a good growth moment for him.”

On Florida’s ball movement:

TODD GOLDEN: “Yeah, knock on wood, and these things change, but it’s been a really positive part of this team. It starts with Walt, he’s unselfish, he’s obviously a great scorer and has great ability, but he understands the calling of him being the lead guard and being able to share it. When you have guys like Alijah, Will, and Denzel out there, all three of those guys are great scorers, shooters and playmakers, and allowing them to make plays is really important. We had some uncharacteristic plays on Saturday where we missed some guys, but I think it was more just first game jitters than any sort of selfishness. This group is really good that way, and we honestly put this team together with that in mind. We expect these guys to be really unselfish and play well together.” 

On whether he’s had a walk-on as popular as Olivier Rioux:

TODD GOLDEN: “Absolutely not, to be honest. It’s funny because about 95 percent of my conversations with random people about are team is about him. It’s the first time we’ve been ranked since 2019 I think and it’s like, ‘Hey, Coach, we’re really excited to see Oli out there this year.’ And I get it, man. He’s a very unique individual. The great thing in our minds is we think he has potential to play at some point. He’s more than just a 7-9 guy. He’s had some really good moments in practice, super coachable and I’m excited for him to get to this point next year and kind of see where we’re at. It’s going to be challenging for him because people are going to be yelling at me and different people to see him and we’ll see what happens but he’s going to have to have patience. I think if he does that, he will continue to develop into a really good player and I think coach Hartman and coach Andrzejek have done a really good job of working with him on a day-to-day basis.”

On whether it’s hard to handle the fanfare for Rioux:

TODD GOLDEN: “Sometimes. In certain moments, you hear certain things. Again, to your point, that one we can see coming from a mile away. That won’t be a surprise when they’re yelling for him but he’ll be mature enough to understand what’s going on and we’ll handle it accordingly.”

On Rioux’s biggest area of growth:

TODD GOLDEN: “He is just more coordinated and a better athlete than you’d think. You know, he runs better. The biggest thing is going to be change of direction and playing multiple possessions at the same time. But he’s further along than we thought he would be. I would say his mobility, his hand-eye and his toughness, I think that’s one of the biggest things for him, he’s this huge guy and being able to functionally use his size and strength to being more of a butt-kicker, I would say is going to be really important for him. He’s gotten better that way. I would say he was not anywhere near good enough when he got here and he’s continuing to get better and he has flashes in practice where he’ll make some plays and you’re like, ‘Woah.’ Like, obviously, we can’t do that with anybody else. We’ll see. He understood this was kind of a long-term project, so to speak. I don’t think anybody expected him to be super ready to go right now but he’s on track and he’s doing a really good job.”

On freshman guard Isaiah Brown:

TODD GOLDEN: “He’s going great, doing great. I would say the best thing about Zay is, even though he’s a freshman, is that we feel comfortable giving him minutes right now. He played a little bit on Saturday. As easy as I can say it, he looked the part. He got out there, he wasn’t fumbling all over himself, wasn’t messing up rotations. The toughest thing for freshmen coming to college – especially in a SEC program, high-major program – is they all go from being the best player on their team to having to figure out what role they can assume within the framework of the group. His best quality is that he’s really good playing with everybody. He knows how to be a good teammate. Has a good feel. Knows what to cut, when to screen, when to rotate defensively, and those are the kinds of things that are really hard to teach. Usually it takes guys about a year in the program to figure it out. Obviously, his coach at [Orlando Christian Prep] did a good job with him, but I think he has that natural instinct as a player. Again, he went out there kind of cold and you learn a lot by how they just handle that situation. You could just tell by looking at him that he wasn’t scared, he wasn’t jittery, he was just ready to compete. I think he’s a guy will put himself in position to earn more minutes as the season goes on.” 

On whether it feels like the season is almost a week away:

TODD GOLDEN: “I think so. I would say last Saturday was an important moment for us, just getting to scrimmage someone else because it has been such a long offseason for us in that way. But we get one more and about 10 days until our first game. Again, work on and see what we could do against Charleston on Saturday, then we should have nine days or so to clean things up before USF, which is going to be a really tough game. I would say, for now, we’re where we need to be.”