Golden apparently hinted it makes sense to ease up in the SEC Tournament

I have no issue with that. The SEC tournament is going to be brutal. Not to mention we lost Micah last year, has to be in the back of any coach's mind. Especially one that is thinking F4 and beyond. Believe he lost a big man at San Fran too during the WCC tournament.

 

Yep. We ran all the way to the Finals, lost our starting center and leading rebounder, and got zero reward for that effort from the Selection Committee. They'd already completed their brackets. Lots of pain, zero gain, and we end up losing in the first round of the NCAAT.
It's not worth it.
Start the usual starting five, and then start subbing so that Micah, Aberdeen, Klavzar, Alexis, and Brown get starters' minutes, and send Mikics in there some too.

 

I'll put our second 5 against anyone else's second 5. Handy, Haugh, Aberdeen, Klavzar and Brown or Handy, Alexis, Haugh, Aberdeen and Klavzar.

 

I think it was the S Carolina game when the annoucers were saying that CTFG said we were tired after the SEC championship game last year and that he might approach it differently this year.

 

I agree to a point, but I really don't want to go 0-1 in the SECT....Need to play the first game (at least) to win.

 

Our 2nd wave might not give an inch and win the damn thing. I'm fine with not running starters heavy mins, but we also need Condon back in game shape for the big dance.

I dont really care the outcome just want us healthy at the end. Micah was one of those freaks things you can't predict or avoid though.

 

Never take your foot off the gas.
Duke just passed us at #2 in the polls.
Play around more and we'll be a 2-Seed.

 

So one big thing about this year is that HOPEFULLY we will not start play until Friday.
Last year we played FOUR games in FOUR days= wow that hurts just typing it.

As long as we only lose 1 more game this year we will at most play 3 games in 3 days.
Still a lot, but not like 4- which we did last year.

Oh- and YES it was ridiculous how the NCAA ignored our great run!!!

 

Maybe I'm in the minority in this because I don't think they should lax in the sec tournament.
I think it creates à bad habit and loser's mentality when you stop going hard in some games. They should try harder to win the SECT too. Why would they treat it any different than other games?

The 04s didnt have a problem winning it back to back and they had a big target on their back when they won it in 07.

 

I want a 1, but being a 2 seed might not be the worst thing this year. The 8/9 seed line looks like it is going to be ridiculous, loaded with sneaky good teams. The 7/10 teams actually look like easier matchups. If everything were to end today of course.

 

The model to use is the NFL pre-season. Win the 2nd game and then pull the starters after the first 2 series in the 3rd. If we win the third then okay!

 

I would say I'm not a fan of "taking it easy". If we're playing, we should play with maximum effort. That being said, I'm also aware that the sec tourney does little for our title hopes. I'm okay with letting the starters sit on the bench for longer stretches, and letting the bench get some more minutes. Playing with lineups to see if there's something magical about a certain lineup, whatever. The players should be playing to win, but resting some guys and playing with the lineups a bit I don't really have a problem with. It's a good time for both. Good news is even if we swap our starters minutes for our bench's minutes even up, we still have a pretty damn good team that can beat just about anyone on any given day.

 

No one wants to enter a tourney on a losing note. Our only two top seeds won the SECs heading into the tourney, and both made the final weekend. That said, those were much weaker fields. I hate having that final on Sunday, and would much rather lose on Saturday than make it to Sunday. But if you make it to the final, it does no harm competing to win it. I mean, the injury to Handlogten could happen any time at any place during the season.

 

The AP and Coach's polls have no bearing on the Selection Committee. We'll play hard and to win these last regular season games to keep our seeding. But as was apparent from last year, the SECT didn't matter at all.

 

We wouldn’t take it easy in the sense that the guys on the floor won’t be putting in max effort. It means we won’t play our starters as many minutes as normal, and let the backups get more time and see what they can do.

 

That’s how I viewed it. Building depth is not a bad thing even if it increases your chances of potentially losing a game you might have otherwise won if your played your staters for the majority of the game. If the SEC tournament has no bearing on final seeding then why not let the backups get some more meaningful time on the court that could prove critical come NCAA tournament time.

 

You may recall, though, that our 2014 team came in as the #1-seed overall. Yes, it won the SECT. And got to play 16-seed Albany, that had lost 15 games, in the first round of the NCAAT. That was in Orlando and I attended. We were sluggish the whole game, and simply weren't the same team. We finally got a little space in the last 10 minutes and won by 12. An 11-seed would have beaten us.

 

And a 12-seed Butler almost beat our 5-seed that made a deep tourney run after it lost early in the SECs. And an 11-seed Michigan State bludgeoned our 2-seed in the second round after we also lost early in the SECs. We could do this all day, haha.

We have never been a 1-seed without winning the tournament, and I think you want to be a 1-seed. This year may be different, though, because of the league's unprecedented quality. We will haven two 1-seeds, and one of them will not win the SECs

 

Here it is, Florida needs to play to win the game, period. This team needs to develop that Championship mindset which is what Billy Donovan had always done in getting ready for the NCAA Tournament. The upcoming regular season schedule would be a great test to prepare for the NCAA Tournament (Golden has yet to win his 1st NCAA Tourney game, so don't have that mentality of not going too hard, just don't):

at Georgia
#17 Texas AM
at #6 Alabama
#26 Ole Miss

Those games above would be like playing a Sweet16 or Elite8 game, so Florida better be on their toes. The regular season SEC Title is still in play should Auburn drop a couple of games - Florida will need help here.

In the SEC-Tourney, Florida should get an SEC bye which would mean the Gators would only play 3 games in 3 days rather than the 4 games in 4-days last season.

Let's take advantage of the SEC bye which UF has not had since the ?2014 season.

In the SEC-T, playing a team like Tennessee, Alabama, and.or Auburn would be like playing a Final4 game or a NCAA Finals game. The Gators could still get revenge against a Missouri or Kentucky.

Besides, in the NCAA Tournament, you would need to beat two very good teams over 3-4 days in order to advance. Florida will get that practice of playing 2-3 great teams over a weekend in the loaded 2025 SEC Tournament.
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Florida Gators 2024-25 Men's College Basketball Stats - ESPN

Also, in order to have your players stay relatively healthy, play more of the bench!!!

Golden has been playing mostly 8-players per game. There are three players that play 30 plus minutes per game: Clayton (32.0 mpg), W.Richard (31.6) and Martin (30.2).

Golden could reduce these players' minutes to about 24-28 min and give more of the minutes to players like Aberdeen, Haugh, Handlogten & Klavazer.

Golden still has to ease the injured players like Condon & Martin back into the line up.

With injuries to players like Condon, Martin, Alexis and even Clayton, that forced Golden to give his role players more opportunities.

For instance, inject Tomas Haugh into the starter role in place of the injured Condon.

Aberdeen has been the starting point guard and/or shooting guard when both Clayton & Martin were injured.

Not having a back-up point guard forced Golden to give Klavazer more of the back-up minutes at guard.

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When injuries in the frontcourt (Condon & Alexis) occured, Handlogten decided to give up his medical redshirt year for the time being. This resulted in giving this team a major boost to keep those frontcourt players from wearing out in a game:
Chinyelu - 4 straight games scoring in double figures (vs LSU: 19 pts 13 reb) Thomas - 4/5 double scoring games & high rebounding games; Thomas nearly had a triple-double vs Miss ST.
Aberdeen - two recent games with 20 & 22 points.
Thomas Haugh - Florida Gators Forward - ESPN
Thomas Haugh - Florida Gators Forward - ESPN
Denzel Aberdeen - Florida Gators Guard - ESPN