‘We played fantastic’: Todd Golden reacts to dominant win vs. Bama

Florida picked up its fourth top-25 win of the season with Friday’s 102-88 victory over Alabama, the most since recording six in 2017-18. Todd Golden is just the second coach in school history to lead UF to six ranked wins within his first two seasons (Tommy Bartlett, 1966-68).

The Gators have reached the SEC Tournament semifinals for the 19th time in program history and the first since 2019. Florida holds a 10-8 record in the semifinal round and last advanced to the championship game in 2014.

Here’s everything Golden had to say after the win against the Crimson Tide in Nashville.

Todd Golden Q&A

Opening comments

Golden: “Incredibly proud of these guys and their teammates for the effort we had tonight. Obviously concerning start going down 8-0 in the first two minutes. After that I thought we played fantastic the rest of the way.

A combination of these guys executing our defensive game plan and limiting their three-point attempts and makes, then just offensively the way we played for each other, sharing the ball, getting downhill.

I think we went on a 17-0 run to end the first half, something along those lines. Great job finishing possessions and making our free throws to never allow the game to get tight.

Alabama is a great team, but we beat them pretty comfortably tonight, and I thought it was a great effort from our group.”

On UF’s showing in Nashville after his two-year contract extension:

Golden: “Obviously it feels great. Appreciate the trust and belief that our administration has in myself and our staff, what we’ve built in a short period of time.

Obviously last night was a tricky game. It went back and forth. But to push through was a little bit after relief.

This game, to be honest, just less pressure coming into this game. Not saying complete house money, but obviously a really good opponent, a loss doesn’t hurt you and a win helps you in a big way.

I felt like our guys played like that after the first couple minutes, felt like it was about us, staying the course.

Obviously, it feels good to have a couple wins after that sign of belief in what we’re building here.”

On the lift from Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh:

Golden: “They’ve been doing it all year. I go back to maybe the Virginia game as the one time where they didn’t have a great effort out there. Since then, I think one of the biggest strengths of our team is the fact that we have a great starting front core with Tyrese and Micah. And then when we bring in Tommy and Condo, there’s really no drop-off. We’re able to continue our stuff.

“They put great pressure on both backboards, especially on the offensive glass. They play so hard, it’s infectious. I think they raise the bar for the older guys at times in terms of setting the tone with how hard they play. They have been doing this for us all year. It’s a big reason why we’ve been so successful.”

On his message to the team at halftime:

Golden: “Listen, Alabama is not the type of team that you can ever take a breath. When you play them, regardless of whether we had the 15-point lead or not, we knew we were going to have to keep scoring, staying aggressive and playing hard for the remainder of the game if we wanted to win.

Alabama, they scored 55 in the second half. Fortunately, we scored 54. It doesn’t really affect us much. But we knew we couldn’t go into the second half and think about starting to bleed clock or slow it down. We wanted to stay super, super aggressive, which I think we did a really good job of doing over the last 20 minutes.”

On the importance of this win:

Golden: “All these games are really important, you know? I feel like last night we were getting back to it, but we weren’t all the way there. A little shaky first half. Better in the second half.

Once we started asserting our will on the glass in the second half, that felt like the team we’d had for the first 30 games of the regular season.

Tonight, after the first two minutes, I felt like we were the team who we’ve been for the last 30 games. Really the last month and a half of conference play where we really stepped it up.

Just a physical team that plays hard, with no fear of failure. I think our guys did a really good job of that tonight. Even when we got the big lead in the second half, we never relaxed. We kept pushing it, kept staying aggressive, kept getting to the foul line, never really allowed them to make it a game.”