The No. 5-ranked Florida Gators won their 11th game in a row on Saturday, 84-77 at Kentucky, behind 20 points by Thomas Haugh and 16 from Boogie Fland. They made five of UF’s eight 3-pointers, and Fland hit four free throws to fend off a late rally by the Wildcats.
Florida has won 16 of its last 17 games with eight straight SEC road victories and is now being projected as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Here’s everything Todd Golden said in his postgame radio interview with Voice of the Gators Sean Kelley.
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Todd Golden Q&A
On UF sweeping Kentucky for the first time since 2018:
TODD GOLDEN: “How about that? Not bad. I thought we played really well for about 35 minutes, and then down the stretch, I did not think we made enough winning plays. We were a little lackadaisical with the ball, allowed Kentucky to stay the game. Fortunately, it never got too, too tight, but that was a game we want to win by 15 or so. Allowed it to be single digits. But overall, we had a lot of great efforts. I thought the tempo and the pace of the game in the second half didn’t go our way, but we guarded pretty well, and offensively, for the most part, we were solid.”
On what was going well for Florida in the first half:
TODD GOLDEN: “I think all of it, you know. I thought our guys did a really good job playing with great pace. Tommy had a great first half, knocking down shots, getting to the rim. Condo did a great job playing out of the short role. Boog and Xaivian did a really good job organizing us, handling their pressure. And I thought we did a good job for the first 10 minutes or so of the second half also. And again, they turned up their pressure. They had to, and I didn’t think we were physical enough in terms of handling that. But overall, we’ll take it.”
On still winning the game despite the second half:
TODD GOLDEN: “We’ve won 16 out of our last 17, and went 8-1 on the road in this league, which is absurd. It’s the best league in America. And our team has really come together and started playing some really great basketball. I think the great thing is, also, we got a lot we can teach off of after this game tonight, in regards to the way we finish. We gotta finish stronger than that.”
On his message to his players trying to close it out:
TODD GOLDEN: “We just talked about being more solid. I thought I did a bad job in terms of using a couple timeouts on some challenges that we thought we saw and we were gonna win. We didn’t get it, so we only had one timeout the whole second half. And I was a little nervous to use one early on when they were making some runs. But again, just continuing to communicate in regards to playing the right way and not making it more difficult on ourselves than we had to.”
On Florida’s resume at the end of the regular season:
TODD GOLDEN: “I feel like we’re in great shape, man. I feel like we did what we had needed to do over the last month, to put ourselves to get a spot. UConn lost today, we won. I think we’re trending to get that last 1 seed if we go to Nashville and play well. But we still got a lot left before the NCAA tournament. We gotta make sure we finish strong.”