SAN ANTONIO — Todd Golden made it about his team, so much so that he was gone from the court, into an Alamodome tunnel, huge smile on his face with a scissored net around his neck, 15 minutes before Florida players and officials joined him.
“I’m just a piece of the puzzle,” he would say later of the national championship run that he assembled like a puzzle master.
But the discussion around Golden this season has been muted, strained and careful all the way to the end, Monday’s dramatic 65-63 comeback win against Houston to seize the title. He has been accused of serious things. It’s a situation not quite like anything we’ve seen with a coach on a run to the last evening of this tournament.
Otherwise, there would be a lot more celebrating of Golden.
The coaches are the stars of this sport — always have been — and he looks like one. That was not the topic his boss, Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin, was addressing amid the celebration on the court, with Golden in the locker room. Stricklin was asked about Golden’s success despite the Title IX investigation the university conducted into allegations of sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and stalking by Golden involving multiple women, ultimately clearing him.
“Todd’s always been honest, and I trust him,” Stricklin said. “Really, he deserves a lot of credit just for the way he was able to focus, block out distractions, don’t worry about things you can’t control, don’t worry about the things people are saying, or whether they’re true or not, and just control the things that are within your control. He deserves a ton of credit for the way he managed that, and obviously having an experienced team and a great staff around him allowed him to do that.”
Asked what he learned from the process, Stricklin said, “Again, control what you can control. When you’re in a high-profile position, people are going to say unfair things about you — whether it’s the media, whether it’s people on social media, it doesn’t matter where. But you can’t be consumed by that. You’ve got to focus on the job at hand, and our job is to make the University of Florida and the Gators and Gainesville proud.”
A national championship can do that. This run was much about the Gators’ ability to come back over and over again in this tournament when things got dire. Months earlier, they stuck together and became one of the best teams in the sport despite the news surrounding Golden.
“This team went through a lot, I’ll say that,” said Florida center Alex Condon, standing a few feet from Stricklin. “That just shows how much resiliency we have. It’s a special team, that’s all I can say.”
At 39, Golden is the youngest coach to win this tournament since 37-year-old Jim Valvano did it 42 years ago, also at the expense of the (still championship-less) Cougars. He’s the third-youngest of the modern era, after Valvano and Bob Knight at age 35 with unbeaten Indiana in 1976. Five others were younger if you go way back, including Indiana’s Branch McCracken (31 in 1940) and Ohio State’s Fred Taylor (35 in 1960).
Think of those names. Consider who Golden just beat for this championship: Kelvin Sampson, who would have been the oldest title-winning coach at age 69, who is one of his profession’s greats of the past quarter-century and who belongs in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Don’t miss the clever moves that got Golden here, including the late play out of a timeout that got struggling star Walter Clayton Jr., open for a 3-pointer off a double screen, buried to tie it.
Look at this career to date, the rise from Saint Mary’s guard to apprenticeships under Kyle Smith and Bruce Pearl to winning at San Francisco and rapidly giving the Gators their teeth back: 16-17 in his first season, 24-12 in his second, 36-4 and the school’s third national championship in his third.
He has now won something legends such as Sampson, Pearl — the other coach he beat in San Antonio — Rick Barnes, Bob Huggins and the late Rick Majerus and Lefty Driesell never did. As tough as it is to project anything long-term, given the chaotic state of the sport right now, Golden has a chance to put himself in rare company in the years ahead.
“That guy is special,” Florida guard Alijah Martin said. “I’m so excited to see what he’ll do going forward.”
The list of multiple-championship coaches is short and distinguished, an exclusive club of 17, headed by names such as John Wooden, Mike Krzyzewski, Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith and Billy Donovan, the guy who got Florida its first two titles. This is where the discussion shifts when you win it all.
But questions about the past will be part of the Golden discussion, too.
The school’s investigation became public in November through a story published by the school’s student newspaper, The Alligator. It reported that Golden was accused of misconduct by multiple women and that its reporters spoke to two unnamed former Florida students. One accused Golden of sending unsolicited lewd photos of himself. The other said Golden stalked her on Instagram.
Golden kept coaching. Then, in mid-January, ESPN reported that a university employee filed a sexual assault complaint to the school’s Title IX office against his assistant coach Taurean Green, who played point guard for Donovan’s championship teams. An athletic department employee accused him of kissing her and trying to put his hands down her pants in March 2024.
The Golden investigation closed Jan. 27 after dozens of interviews, according to the school, which determined there was “no evidence to indicate that sexual harassment, as defined by Title IX, occurred within a university program or activity.” The Title IX review was concluded without the issuance of a formal report, per an open records request to the university.
The Green case remains open.
Golden the coach has received less publicity than a coach succeeding at this level would normally receive. Golden the husband, the person? The stories that get told this time of year when a coach keeps winning? They are conspicuous in their scarcity. Meanwhile, online fan discourse has been predictably coarse.
This was a glorious championship run for the Florida Gators and their fans. This was a brilliant coaching job by Golden, one of the young stars of his profession. This is in the books. But there was an uneasiness about the whole thing, and that may never go away, either.
— The Athletic’s Brendan Marks, Lindsay Schnell, Matt Baker and Brian Hamilton contributed reporting.
(Top photo of Golden: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)