By: Nick Marcinko -- February 18, 2025 The No.2 Florida Gators basketball team improved to 23-3 (10-3 SEC) on the 2024/25 season following their 85-63 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners on Tuesday night. Walter Clayton Jr.’s 18 points led five Gators in double figures, as UF hit 12 3-pointers and matched a season-low with six turnovers. Will Richard and Alijah Martin scored 14 points each, while Rueben Chinyelu added 11 and Urban Klavžar scored a career-high 10. Florida knocked down six consecutive 3-point attempts while opening up a 20-point first half lead. Five of those 3s came within a 17-3 Florida run. Florida extended its winning streak to five and has hit double-figure 3-pointers in all five games over this stretch. Over the five games, UF is .420 from 3-point range, averaging 12.6 made per game. Five different Gators are shooting 40% or better from 3 over that stretch, including Klavžar’s 9-for-13 (.692) hot streak. Here’s everything head coach Todd Golden had to say following the Gators’ victory. Everything Todd Golden said following win over Oklahoma | GatorCountry.com
Golden is refreshingly astute and honest on his post game comments. He really has a feel for the game and his team composition. He is generally respectful of the competition. I’d say he was a fabulous find and he seems to love his team and UF; he always acknowledges the fan support at home games. We are fortunate to have him because we sure wouldn’t want to play against him!
Well I'm going to go ahead and say it. Golden is special. I don't know if he's Donovan level yet as he has to win back to back championships for that. But I'll go ahead and say he's in the ball park.
Lots of good quotes in there for sure. I especially liked this part: An example I’ll give is I took Walt and Will out, I think it was like 10 minutes to go in the second half. Selfish guys would have been pissed that they didn’t get to go back in the game. They’re usually playing 34, 35 minutes, tonight they played 27. I was mindful of it. I looked down at the bench with about five minutes ago, we had a score and both those guys were up going nuts for their teammates when they finished the bucket. And I’m just like, man, this is why we’re good right here. These guys that are senior leaders that unfortunately for us, in a couple months are going to be moved on and playing pro and having aspirations to play at the highest level. Instead of them worried about their individual numbers, they’re going for Denzel, Urby and Zay when they’re in the game to go have some success and have some personal points and accolades.
Glad he acknowlegded that we fouled too much. The foul right before half that he was talking about the anylitics, was that the Clayton foul way out from the basket? If so, I and others thought it was just a dumb foul (of course fouling a 90% FT shooter is dumb), but it worked out.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but Golden is right that we improved our expected margin of victory with that foul, even fouling a 90% shooter. Per his math, which seems about right: Expected points without fouling: OU: 0.9 UF: 0 Margin: UF -0.9 Range of likely outcomes: UF -3 to 0 Expected points with fouling: OU: 1.5 UF: 0.9 Margin: UF -0.6 Range of likely outcomes: UF -2 to +3
Yeah, I could tell Walter wanted that to be called. Amazed at how aware in the moment our staff and players are in that situation. Traditionally, that's considered a bad foul....but as Coach Golden pointed out, statistically it was not. As it turned out, it was brilliant and might have been a 4-5 point swing in our favor.
That's absolutely what he was talking about. I called it "incredibly dumb" on Clayton's part during the game thread. So I offer my full apology to the young man. He was apparently directed to foul by CTG as an analytics tactic, just maybe not foul FREARS. They'll discuss the foul target during the film session, no doubt. Mea culpa.
