Florida’s championship window remains open, but Todd Golden knows last season’s success will not make the Gators’ next run any easier.
Florida retained Boogie Fland, Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu while bringing Denzel Aberdeen back after a season at Kentucky. That continuity gives the Gators another veteran roster, although Aberdeen’s eligibility remains tied to an ongoing legal fight with the NCAA.
Golden discussed the returning core, the motivation created by last season’s NCAA Tournament exit, Aberdeen’s case and the expectations surrounding Condon at SEC Basketball Tipoff.
Here’s everything Golden had to say.
What did you see in Boogie Fland when you brought him in, and how has he grown since then?
Yeah, he’s been great for us. I think when we brought him into our program, he had big shoes to fill, replacing our perimeter,
who all got drafted in the NBA, and coming after kind of an injury-plagued year at Arkansas.
I feel like he did a good job learning from that experience and obviously led us in our backcourt to a No. 1 seed last year and did a really, really nice job in conference play.
I’m excited for Boog and our program to get him for his second year. I think that continuity and being able to continue to build the partnership with me and the rest of our program will suit him really well for a successful season this year.
What are you implementing to maintain the high standard Florida established last season?
A big key was our ability to retain our best players. Getting Tommy, Condon and Rueben back gave us a leg up in that regard, and bringing Denzel Aberdeen back has been a huge lift for our program.
We retained, I think, six or seven of our top eight or nine, so we had some really good continuity that way. Bringing Denzel back adds to that.
I think for us, it’s just understanding that just because we did it last year, it’s not going to be as easy to do it again. That challenge is in front of us. I think, for myself and the players, we have a goal to win the league again, and we know it’s going to be a really hard challenge.
What is your level of confidence that Denzel Aberdeen will be available amid his legal situation?
He’s eligible right now. He won his temporary injunction. The NCAA is trying to keep him from playing, just like any other person in that class, which is a conversation for a different day.
We remain very confident. I think Denzel, first of all, has the best facts of anybody in America in regard to these Five-for-Five situations. He has a great legal team that put an incredible argument forward.
We’re planning on having him, and we feel good about it.
Has the NCAA’s handling of the Class of 2022 created chaos, and how has it affected roster construction?
It’s a really difficult situation to navigate. I believe the current stance the NCAA is taking is the situation that’s causing the chaos right now.
I think when you have a rule that clearly states that players get five years of eligibility within a five-year clock, but you’re trying to arbitrarily carve out a class to prevent chaos when said chaos has never been shown in really any examples across America or across any sports, there are a lot of points in this discussion that don’t make a lot of sense to us.
The NCAA has marketed and spent millions of dollars promoting the Protect College Sports Act, and if that were to pass, the Class of 2022 athletes would be eligible to play. There’s some give-and-take there where that doesn’t make any sense, while they’re trying to prevent them from playing but, at the same time, arguing that this act should pass, in which they would be eligible.
The displacement argument is factually inaccurate. There’s going to be displacement next year. I think the biggest thing that is kind of confused with this is they talk about congestion at the top and that we need freshmen to be able to come up.
The congestion in the power leagues is, in my opinion, derived from the transfer legislation. When guys have the ability to be free agents every year, us as coaches who manage these programs have to do what we think is best to give ourselves the best chance to win.
I don’t think it’s that hard to understand that when you have older guys — seniors and juniors — those guys, generally speaking, are going to give you the best chance. There are some really talented freshmen out there, but as long as guys and gals are able to transfer every year, I think there’s going to be that compression felt.
Again, we’re going to have displacement next year in the cycle. There’s not anybody leaving, with a whole class of high school kids coming in. You could maybe argue next year there’s going to be some displacement, if that’s where you want to go.
I think there are just a lot of misguided arguments and none that really make a lot of sense to keep the 2022 class out of competition this season.
How did the conversations about bringing Denzel Aberdeen back begin?
Denzel, as you know from covering Kentucky, is an incredible, incredible young man and a great kid.
When he left, obviously, we were disappointed to see him go, but there was never any ill will. He remained really, really close with the guys on the team. They were and still are great friends.
As soon as the season was over, he reached out to one of the guys on the team and asked what it would look like and if we had any interest in bringing him back because he already had the mindset that he was going to fight for a fifth year and try to get a waiver because he only played 40 minutes as a freshman.
Of course, we were excited to bring him back. We thought that he would win the waiver, but even then, we thought he had a great case from a Five-for-Five standpoint.
The guys seamlessly took him back. We had conversations with every guy on our team about bringing him back, and not one guy wanted to leave with him coming back.
I think that speaks to him as a person and the character of our program, that the guys wanted to have him back. It’s been awesome having him. He’s playing great, he looks awesome, and I think he’s going to be a big addition to our team this year.
How deeply have you gotten into the legal issues that now affect college basketball?
It’s a really important part of our program, so I’m getting pretty deep into it. This legal situation is something that sparked my interest a little bit. My father is an attorney, and I grew up around it.
I truly believe that the Class of 2022 deserves to play, especially at this point, with everybody having started school. Everybody’s in the middle of their semesters. There aren’t guys or gals just hanging out there, waiting to see if somebody wins, to jump back in, reenroll and play. We’re long past that conversation that was taking place in May and June.
At this point, the NCAA is trying to argue that it’s trying to prevent chaos, but it’s really causing it, as coach Rick Barnes talked about yesterday.
I believe it’s my job as the leader of this program to have a really good understanding of what we’re up against, what we’re arguing and what we’re fighting for. I’ve taken a pretty big interest in the legal portion of what we’re going through right now in college sports.
Can the way last season ended provide motivation, or is it in the rearview mirror?
Both, I guess I would say. I don’t necessarily think we needed that loss to create motivation, but at the same time, I think we’ve done a good job of taking the positives out of it.
Transparently, I’m not sure we get Tommy, Rueben and Condon back if we make a deep run last year. I think those guys were probably ready to move on, but that bad taste in their mouths provided us an opportunity to get this group back together for one last try, which is amazing and definitely a great spin off the way last year ended.
I think we’re doing a good job using that as a learning experience. I didn’t coach well enough in the tournament game. I don’t think our players competed to their best, and we have an opportunity to try to get it right this year.
It’s really, really hard to win at a high level. Just because we get these guys back, it doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to make the Final Four, but we have a better chance.
I think we understand that having this group together for one last run is a special opportunity. We’re doing everything we can to not let it slip or not take as full advantage of it as we should.
What changed for Alex Condon late last season, and will reduced preseason expectations help him?
I think that affected Alex individually, and I think it affected our program as a whole to start last year.
We understood that we had a lot of expectations. We knew that was going to be something that we had to be up against, but you can’t really attack it until you experience it. We just didn’t do a great job handling those expectations to start the year.
Alex, I think, was pressing a little bit and didn’t play his best until really after the Auburn game in SEC play. Then he played like one of the best players in America over the last month and a half or two months of the season.
To your point, I think he was KenPom MVP in five of our last 10 games or something like that. He was just playing at an insanely high level.
I think all of our guys, myself included, can use last year as a learning experience to not allow the expectations to affect us or dictate how we go. We can use that to make sure we get off to a better start this season.
I don’t think it will affect any of our players, nor myself, negatively. I think we’re more ready for this this year than we were last year.
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Todd Golden says Gators learned how to carry championship expectations
