Todd Golden and his team know a little something about preseason pressure.
Golden's Gators Used to Dealing With Sky-High Expectations
Thursday, September 24, 2026 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
Share:
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Each day, Todd Golden walks into the Florida practice gym and sees a half-dozen guys who had a hand in winning a national championship, including a trio of seniors with All-America pedigree. It's because of those guys, along with the others surrounding them, and a battle-tested group of coaches that the Gators are expected to be tabbed as the nation's No. 1 team when preseason polls are released next month.
With those expectations, of course, comes pressure. Golden acknowledges as much, but also can easily put that stress in perspective.
The pressure to repeat of a year ago was no bargain, either.
"I don't feel as stressed going into [this] season," Golden said Thursday during a media session, his first of fall practice that tipped off Monday. "Last year, kind of carrying the torch of the national championship into the season, was a lot. And we had a new team. We had some returners, but we had a new team. And I feel like, for myself, some of the guys on the team, it took us a little bit to get comfortable in that role."
Yes, the 2025-26 Gators returned some really good players, including Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu, off the squad that won 36 games and defeated a pair of No. 1 seeds in the Final Four to capture the 2025 NCAA title.
They also lost three fairly significant players off that team in guards Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin. Maybe you've heard of them.
It took the balance of the non-league slate to find some cohesiveness with a completely new backcourt. Even with those adjustments, UF still went 27-8 last season, won the program's first Southeastern Conference regular-season crown in 12 years and earned a second straight No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"We'll collectively be more prepared and better ready to handle that earlier in the year," Golden said. "I think we're more prepared to kind of hit the ground running."
It starts with the return — again — of Haugh, Condon and Chinyelu, but also Boogie Fland, who will be the first point guard to play consecutive seasons in the system since Golden arrived in 2023. The coaching staff has gushed about Fland's offseason, especially his standout play (on both ends) in pickup games.
Now roll in the return of guard Denzel Aberdeen, back in the fold after a season at Kentucky, and the Gators aren't grooming a new backcourt like a year ago, but rather fine-tuning one with a returning starter on the ball and pairing him with a two-guard who was a huge part of that national championship playing both guard positions.
Aberdeen, who started 35 games for the Wildcats last season, has a court date on Tuesday to rule on his petition for a fifth year of eligibility. Both the UF administration and coaching staff is optimistic about his chances.
With Aberdeen in the fold and alongside Fland, those five projected starters have played more than 500 college basketballs games, with nearly 300 starts. The quartet of Condon, Haugh, Chinyelu and Aberdeen teamed up to play 70 games together over two seasons and won 60 of them. Oh yeah, and raised a trophy.
"You want expectations because it means you're doing something right," Fland said.
Those aforementioned numbers don't take into account the contributions the last two seasons from junior reserves Urban Klavzar and Isaiah Brown, both of who had hands in the national title, nor what could become of the other guys down the bench.
Klavzar, a blistering 3-point shooter, was the 2026 SEC Sixth Man of the Year and is in the best shape of his basketball. Since returning for the fall semester, Brown has played his highest, most consistent basketball since joining the program.
"The way he's attacking his workouts, his nutrition, his weight and on-floor stuff, it's telling us that he really wants to be good," Golden said of Brown.
How deep the team goes — whether all the way to Alex Lloyd or CJ Ingram or to freshmen bigs Domen Petrovic and Arturas Butajevas — will be something that plays out through October and well into an ambitious slate of pre-SEC games.
Florida opens the regular season Nov. 2 against Miami in Tampa at the same venue where the season ended in gut-punch fashion in a last-second loss to Iowa in the second round of NCAA play.
Yeah, expectations will be high that night.
"Last year ended not the way we wanted it to end and I think it's kind of pretty how it's gone, starting from coaches down to last man," said Chinyelu, the 2026 NCAA and SEC Defensive Player of the Year. "Everybody was pretty much hurt [by the loss] and I think so many guys also came back because going out that way wasn't something that we want to have or reminisce about."
Or be asked about by media. But it's part of the deal.
