College basketball has seen a great deal of turnover at the head coach position in 2022 and the Florida Gators were among the many to refresh its bench with a new name. Though the transition from the [autotag]Mike White[/autotag] era was anything but smooth, the Orange and Blue quickly found their man in [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag], a young up-and-comer with a strong focus on analytics and an NBA-style approach to the game.
The jury is still out on the hire, but that has not prevented anyone from opining on the move, including the Gators Wire staff who gave its roundtable take a month ago. Along with Sports Illustrated, which was bullish on the decision to bring Golden to Gainesville, The Athletic’s Brian Hamilton also graded out the many coaching changes.
Hamilton had a less optimistic view on things, placing the move in the middle of the road at Tier 3 (out of a total of five tiers). Here is how he justified his grade.
From the outset, the 36-year-old Golden appeared to be a top target for Florida administrators. He’s one of the keener analytics-heavy minds in college hoops and has a self-assured, serrated sideline personality to boot. (The worst epithet in a Golden program is “soft.”) Best-case? Florida found another [autotag]Billy Donovan[/autotag]. The enormous variable is fit. Golden is basically a lifelong West Coast guy — an Arizona native who played at Saint Mary’s and coached at San Francisco the last five years. He spent four years combined on staff at Columbia and Auburn, but that’s comparatively a blip. Golden has one season of SEC recruiting experience, though he and his staff are off to a decent start: They held on to four-star 2022 signee [autotag]Jalen Reed[/autotag] and landed two well-regarded transfers ([autotag]Alex Fudge[/autotag] and [autotag]Will Richard[/autotag]). Many more brawls to come, though. It’s odd. Florida fans should be happy with the search while also remaining curious, fairly, about where the on-floor results will land on the spectrum: Boom or bust or dang near anything in between.
Hamilton is not wrong about the boom-or-bust breadth of the hire, but given the direction the college game is heading and the importance of preparing players for the next level, Golden offers a higher probability of success than failure despite his lack of big-time experience as a head coach. If nothing else, the brand of basketball he brings to the O’Connell Center is one that the fans will enjoy and that is something the Gator Nation can get behind.
[mm-video type=video id=01g0mfxnrkwfbjydq7ca playlist_id=01eqbz250mdknqvm5z player_id=01eqbvp13nn1gy6hd4 image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01g0mfxnrkwfbjydq7ca/01g0mfxnrkwfbjydq7ca-837e1b5942895af848a48f17a11ea36a.jpg]
[lawrence-related id=82761,82758,82744,82626,82622]
[listicle id=80329]
[listicle id=80505]
Follow us @GatorsWire on Twitter and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Florida Gators news, notes and opinions.
Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today.