{"id":199338,"date":"2026-03-20T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/199338\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T16:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T16:03:11","slug":"golden-chinyelu-named-naismith-semifinalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/199338\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden, Chinyelu Named Naismith Semifinalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida men’s basketball head coach Todd Golden and junior center Rueben Chinyelu earned recognition as Naismith semifinalists, the Atlanta Tipoff Club announced on Friday, Golden for Coach of the Year and Chinyelu for Defensive Player of the Year.<\/a>
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\nGolden and the Gators rallied from a 5-4 start to finish out the regular season with a 21-2 run and the Southeastern Conference regular season championship on the way to a second consecutive No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
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\nChinyelu has established himself as one of the nation’s premier defenders in the paint with the versatility to contain smaller guards. His 379 rebounds this season are more than any player but Neal Walk in Florida history, and he is one of three players nationally averaging 11.5 rebounds per game.
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\nThe Gators open NCAA Tournament action Friday at 9:25 p.m. on TNT, facing Prairie View A&M in Tampa.
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\nNaismith Coach of the Year Semifinalists
\nMark Byington, Vanderbilt
\nTodd Golden<\/a>, Florida
\nFred Hoiberg, Nebraska
\nTom Izzo, Michigan State
\nTommy Lloyd, Arizona
\nDusty May, Michigan
\nRyan Odom, Virginia
\nT.J. Otzelberger, Iowa State
\nJon Scheyer, Duke
\nTravis Steele, Miami (OH)
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\nNaismith Defensive Player of the Year Semifinalists
\nFlory Bidunga, Kansas
\nCameron Boozer, Duke
\nJaden Bradley, Arizona
\nMaliq Brown, Duke
\nRueben Chinyelu<\/a>, Florida
\nZuby Ejiofor, St. John’s
\nYaxel Lendeborg, Michigan
\nTamin Lipsey, Iowa State
\nAday Mara, Michigan
\nJoseph Tugler, Houston
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida men’s basketball head coach Todd Golden and junior center Rueben Chinyelu earned recognition as Naismith semifinalists, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-199338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}