Florida basketball head coach Todd Golden previewed the Gators’ upcoming matchup with the Texas Longhorns on Wednesday, painting it as a serious test with late-season positioning implications.
Golden called Texas a legitimate offensive threat and one of the best teams in the nation at getting to the free-throw line. They’ve performed well in league play, and Florida regressed in certain ways despite coming off a 2-0 week. The Longhorns have a challenging big man to deal with in Matas Vokietaitis and a three-level scorer in Dailyn Swain. Golden also noted a few veteran guards and shooting threats that Florida has to be careful with.
He also touched on the team’s performance against Ole Miss, noting a poor day in the turnover area. He praised the team’s shooting ability but said that they won’t rely on going 50% from three-point range to win big games. Florida made a deep run last year, and Golden compared this year’s group to that one.
Here’s everything he said ahead of Wednesday’s matchup with Texas.
Todd Golden on Texas’ overall profile
“I think they’re a really good offensive team. I think they’re top seven in KenPom on the season, and they’ve had some really good wins in our league. They won at Alabama and won. They’ve been a tough team to play. I think they’ve won five in a row before they lost to Georgia, so they’ve had good success. They have talented players.
“Big Matas (Vokietaitis) is a problem down in the block. Swain’s having a breakout year, one of the better wings in the league. Tramon Mark has been in the league for a long time. Jordan Pope’s been in the league. There are some really nice pieces. (Camden) Heidi can really shoot. He played at Purdue for a while, so he has some winning DNA. Year one for them, they did a good job getting good players in there. That’s going to be a really tough challenge on the road.”
On Dailyn Swain’s development
“He’s a really talented wing scorer. He’s shot the ball a lot better this year. That was an area of growth for him coming into the year. He’s shot it well from three. His playmaking is there. He’s turned himself into a three-level scorer. He’s been a real problem for the league. We’re going to challenge our guys similar to Keyshawn Hall and his ability to score from different levels. Keyshhawn gave us problems, so we’ve got to do a really good job on that guy tomorrow.”
On Texas getting to the free-throw line
“That’s a huge part of the game tomorrow. They’re a really elite offense, but a big part of it is their ability to get to the line and capitalize. Those two guys, Matas and Swain, have been able to get there a lot. Matas has an insane free-throw rate. I think he’s like a 100% free-throw rate, something like that, which is scary from a foul-drawing perspective, it’s scary.
“Swain’s similar, especially when he gets downhill going right. He’s really hard to keep in front and prevent from getting to the line. That’s going to determine the result tomorrow. If they get to the line a lot, it’ll be hard to beat them. If we do a good job keeping them off the line, we’ll give ourselves a fair chance to win the game.”
On turnover margin
“We need to improve that way offensively for sure. A 2-0 week for us last week, but we regressed in our ability to take care of the ball. Saturday was dangerous for us because we scored 94 points and there were a lot of things to be excited about, but the fundamental things that have made us good over the past month and a half — taking care of the ball — were not there.
“As fun as it was to see us shoot the ball the way we did on Saturday, both from the three-point line and free-throw line, we do not want to be reliant upon that shot making to score 94 points. I think we turned it over about 24% of the time, which is awful and a terrible formula for winning tomorrow night. We’ve got to keep them off the line and take better care of the ball.”
On coaching through wins
“The lessons are much better received after wins than losses. When you win, human nature, you have confidence and you’re feeling good about it. There are good opportunities to be constructive in your criticism of the effort. We did many things great against Ole Miss. I’m not complaining about a win like that. But for us to be the best we can be, we can’t regress in the ball-handling department. That was an issue early in the year. We’ve gotten really good that way in league play. Last week, we weren’t great. Against Ole Miss, 19 turnovers. It’s just not good enough.”
On shooting rhythm
“I think we continue to get more and more comfortable. It’s not as simple as you’re either comfortable or you’re not. There are different levels of comfort along the way. I think we continue to get more comfortable. X is a good example of that. I think Urby is a great example. He had good games to start the year, but now he’s in a really nice rhythm where it feels like every time he sees the rim, we feel like there’s a good chance it’s going in.
“Boog hit three on Saturday. Condo hit one. You start feeling it a little bit. I think guys are hoping, really for Condo and Boog, that all the work they’re putting in is paying off and they’ll start seeing it go through. X has broken through and Urby has taken his game to another level that way.
On three-point shooting at both ends
“Well, what’s more impressive for this team was definitely the 11-for-22 on the offensive end. We’ve had some games where we’ve held teams on the defensive end, not so many games like we did offensively. So that was great.
“We were pleased with our effort in terms of taking away the three for sure. I thought we did a good job on Pinkins and Perry. Those guys were drillers, and we did a good job limiting their opportunities. I think Perry hit one in transition that was off a turnover. Other than that, we did a good job in the half-court on those guys.
“I expect us to be a really good three-point defensive team. When we shoot the ball well offensively from three, that’s a little bit of the cherry on top for us. That gives us a much higher ceiling.”
Is there a direct correlation there?
“There hadn’t been up to this point. Maybe Saturday was the moment that happened, but I don’t necessarily think so.”
On mindset compared to last season
“It’s a great question. I think last year it was kind of new to us being in that position. We were top five at that point, and we still hadn’t won an SEC tournament championship. We still hadn’t won a tournament game. So we were relatively brand new in regards to being in that moment.
“This year, as a staff, we’re more prepared to take on these next couple of weeks. A lot of the guys in our program that were here last year are able to process what’s going on and how to attack these next couple of weeks the right way. There’s definitely a benefit of having that experience from last year. But it is a different team and guys are in different roles. There’s still a lot of newness to that. But there’s no doubt last year’s experience will help us over these next couple of weeks.”
Golden onseeding and the NCAA mock bracket
“I think we’re probably a two right now if I was doing the bracket, but I’m not. I think it’s all really close. These next couple of weeks are going to determine who slides and who drops down. I don’t think there’s too much of a difference necessarily between being a two and a three. Once you start going from a three to four or two to one, that’s when the difference really shows up.
“We want to be the highest we can be. Can we still get to a one seed? We’ll see. If we run the table, you never know. That would be an incredible situation to think about. But our goal is taking care of business day by day to win the league and then play to the highest possible level in March.
“At least what I saw was we were initially an eight, then the committee flipped us down to a ten again. That’s fine for now. We’ll see how these next couple of weeks go. We can continue to put pressure on them to make us the highest possible.”
Golden on Klavzar’s development off the bench
“I think last year that was a big part of delaying his success, not knowing when he was going to be eligible. Having to try to work him into the rotation after the season already started. We had some pretty good players in front of him last year, so it was kind of hard to break in there. But that whole time, we were very confident in his abilities and how he could help our program. It’s what gave us confidence to roll with this group coming into this year. We thought he would make a big jump, and he certainly has.
“It’s hard to argue who’s been a better guard off the bench in SEC play. He’s been consistently in double figures. His shooting stats are remarkable. I think he’s like 68% from two and 43% from three in league or something like that. He competes his tail off defensively. He’s going to always try to do what’s in the best interest of the team. He’s turned into a really, really good player and one that we’re really happy to have in our program.”
Golden on Tommy’s breakaway dunk
“I don’t think Tommy was thinking that (he had to get to 20 points). I think he was thinking more that he was going to go up and do something cool and didn’t do anything that cool after he left the air. We were laughing about it after the game. Tommy’s one of the most unselfish dudes around.
“Him and X are super tight, Boog, all these guys get along really well. If we had any issues that way, that would be a situation where people could point to, but they laughed about it. Tommy was talking about wanting to do a windmill, realizing he didn’t have enough room, and X was like just throw me an alley-oop next time. A lot of that kind of back and forth conversation, but it was fun to kind of poke Tommy on that one.
“If you didn’t know him, you would think he should have dished that over; that’s kind of a selfish play. He doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body. I think he was trying to take advantage of an opportunity and it just ended up being a normal dunk. It is what it is.”
Golden on team chemistry
“We have great team talent is what I call it. Our guys are really good about making each other better. We really don’t have any selfishness in our program. We don’t feel like we have any guys that are on an island, worrying about themselves and not the greater good of the team. We recruit that, but our guys deserve a lot of credit because it’s in their DNA. It’s who they are.
“It’s allowed us to get through the early-season struggles of not winning all these games. I think weaker-minded guys or more selfish guys would have used that as an opportunity to blame others or make it more about themselves. We just kept staying together and not allowing any of the outside criticism to affect5 how we operate. I think that’s unique, especially now.
“It’s really hard to build teams like that now, especially in this kind of free-agent era of college athletics, that are more focused on the greater good of the team. But that’s what we try to do here at Florida. We’ve been successful that way, especially with this group. They’re not perfect. No team is. But they’re really unselfish, and they’re really good guys.
“We had a donor travel with us to Ole Miss, and all he could talk about was how awesome it was to see the way our guys interact and hang out and have fun together. It’s something that’s important to us. It’s something that we work on a lot and something that we don’t take for granted.”
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Golden talks matchup with Texas, lessons learned against Ole Miss
Reporting by David Rosenberg, Gators Wire / Gators Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
