GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Scott Stricklin has a message for anyone who thinks Todd Golden doesn’t have the résumé or credentials to be the University of Florida’s new basketball coach.
The Gators’ athletic director resurrected a quote from one of the most legendary athletes of all time on Wednesday when asked why he chose Golden, the young whiz-kid coach, as the man he hopes will lead UF’s program back to national prominence and dominance.
“Wayne Gretzky once said, ‘Don’t skate where the puck is; skate where the puck is going to be,’ ” Stricklin said after introducing Golden as UF’s next head coach.
If Stricklin is quoting the Great One, it must mean he believes the 36-year-old Golden, too, has a chance to be a great one in his own right. The analytics-driven Golden is considered a prodigy; a youthful-looking boy wonder who just led San Francisco to its first NCAA tournament in 25 years.
After consulting with legendary former UF coach Billy Donovan (now the head coach of the Chicago Bulls) and former Gators assistant coach Mark Daigneault (now the head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder), Stricklin became enamored with Golden’s fanatical, mathematical approach to the game.
“Analytics is where the game is going,” Stricklin said. “When I spoke with Mark Daigneault, he said to me: ‘Everything in the NBA is analytics- and date-driven and I’m surprised this approach hasn’t gotten into college as much.’ That’s where the college game is eventually going to go and the fact that Todd is already there puts us on the cutting edge of innovation. Todd Golden is already where the future of college basketball is heading.”
Golden’s parents, Scott and Gale, nodded proudly and knowingly when their son stood at the podium Wednesday and talked about how he became obsessed with numbers and analytics as a kid when he would sit at a table, eat his cereal and memorize the box scores and the agate page as Dad read the morning newspaper.
One day, when Todd was about 8 years old, he started reciting a sequence of numbers and letters — “6-5-7-3-4-T-Y” — when his father asked what exactly he was talking about.
“It was our neighbor Ed’s license-plate number,” Scott said, then laughed. “Todd was memorizing every license plate in the neighborhood.”
Said Gale: “Scott scored off the charts on mathematical analysis and calculations on standardized tests. He could always do things in his head without writing anything down.”
When Golden got into college as a walk-on point guard at St. Mary’s, his coaches taught him how to improve his own game through analytics. The St. Mary’s coaching staff charted 40 different “hustle stats” at practice and Golden not only committed them to memory, he took them to heart.
He worked to improve his numbers in all of the key “winning” statistical categories and quickly became a starter, helping St. Mary’s to two NCAA tourney bids before graduating. It reached a point where he could calculate not only his own plus-minus numbers in his head but the plus-minus numbers of his teammates as well. As a senior, he ranked second in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio.
“I was really good at taking care of the ball,” Golden said. “I understood the value of that. I think I had an 82-to-27 assist-to-turnover ratio. It forms a style I like to coach. We try to view everything we can through an analytical lens. What we try to do is find the incremental value in the margins.”
It is fascinating to listen to Golden talk about advanced analytics, but, of course, all Gator Nation cares about is one key not-so-advanced analytic: Championship-to-coach ratio. It’s no secret that one of the reasons predecessor Mike White bolted and took a job at the worst program in the SEC — Georgia —is because he was tired of dealing with unrealistic expectations among a vocal faction of Gator Nation.
After White took over for the iconic Donovan, he made four out of six NCAA tournaments and advanced to the Elite Eight once — but never came close to winning an SEC championship. A case could be made that White was the second-best basketball coach in Gators history, but the problem is he followed the greatest basketball coach in Gators history.
And not only was Donovan the greatest coach in Gators history, he was one of the greatest college basketball coaches in the history of game. White’s relationship with Gator Nation became untenable as he fruitlessly strived to reach the unreachable bar Donovan set. There are those within the UF athletic program who believe White became miserable dealing with his many critics and it even made him reticent to get out in the community to sell his program to UF’s finicky fan base.
“Coach White leaving here, it didn’t mean anything to me to be honest,” Golden said. “I don’t know what he was going through or what led him to [leave], but it didn’t change the way I felt about this place at all. Honestly, at a place like this, you should have high expectations. … I’m going to strive to have the same amount of success as coach Donovan did.”
Here’s hoping Todd Golden achieves his lofty goals at the University of Florida, but it’s going to be difficult.
Even more difficult than memorizing the license plates of every car in the whole neighborhood.
