Of the 10 to 15 programs that have had the biggest impact on men’s college basketball over the past two decades, perhaps none entered the post-COVID world with a more uncertain long-term future than Florida.
From 2014 to 2024, Florida participated in a total of only five NCAA tournaments. He was never ranked higher than fourth place and only made it to the second weekend of the tournament once.
There was a general belief that UF was a program that had experienced some nice moments over the years, caught in lightning in a bottle for a brief period in the mid-2000s, and was now prepared to live out the rest of its basketball existence as a notable one as well.
Such an existence would not have been atypical in Florida.
On a football-crazed campus, Gator basketball was always fighting an uphill battle when it came to capturing the full attention of its fan base before the end of December. Before Billy Donovan arrived in Gainesville in 1996, sports weren’t even an after-vacation pastime.
Despite playing in a power conference since the SEC’s inception in 1932, Florida had played in only five NCAA tournaments in its history. He had made it through opening weekend only twice before Donovan was hired.
The hiring of Donovan, who was only 31 years old and (despite his slicked-back hair) looked like he could have passed for 21, initially didn’t have much of an impact on the world of college basketball. Donovan was a name, sure, but that had more to do with his playing days at Providence and his close relationship with his college coach, Rick Pitino. After spending five seasons as an assistant at Kentucky under Pitino, Donovan was hired as head coach at Marshall, where he went 35-20 in two seasons and never flirted with an NCAA Tournament appearance.
Despite the lack of anything resembling initial buzz, Donovan’s hiring ushered in an era of success in Gainesville that no one saw coming.
Under “Billy the Kid,” Florida made 14 trips to the Big Dance, won six SEC championships, advanced to the Final Four four times and, until 12 months ago, was the most recent program to win back-to-back national championships (2006-07).
As is often the case, all that success came with rumors of bigger and better things for the man responsible. Openings at programs like Kentucky and UCLA and a brief commitment by Donovan to become the new head coach of the Orlando Magic forced Florida fans to come face to face with the question of what their national basketball program would look like without the man receiving the majority of the credit for their rapid rise.
They had to face that world head-on when Donovan was finally lured to the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2015. The departure came after a dismal 16-17 campaign, Donovan’s first losing season as head coach since his second year in Gainesville.
Florida handed the keys to his car to Mike White. Like Donovan before him, White had been a head coach at just one stop before UF (Louisiana Tech) and had never coached a game in the NCAA Tournament. That was where the similarities ended.
The program didn’t fall off a cliff in the years immediately following Donovan’s departure, but it didn’t matter either. White led Florida to the NCAA Tournament in four consecutive years between 2017 and 2021, winning at least one game in the Big Dance each time. But there was only one trip beyond the second round, the team was never a serious contender for an SEC championship, and the Gators were just 10-15 in the month of March between 2017 and 2022. That’s when White said “you can’t fire me, I’m quitting” and left for Georgia.
Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin quickly turned his attention to Todd Golden, a head coach with a familiar profile.
Golden was 36 years old, looked significantly younger, and had a progressive approach to the game of basketball. In San Francisco, Golden had preached “Nerd Ball,” a term coined by former USF head coach Kyle Smith, with whom Golden worked for three seasons. Emphasizing analytics and program-specific internal “hustle stats,” Golden won 57 games in three seasons with the Dons, leading them to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large selection in 2022.
Questions from Gator fans about whether or not the approach could work at the power conference level initially found no comforting answer. Florida went 16-17 in the first year, losing in the first round of the NIT. They reached the NCAA Tournament as a seventh seed a year later, losing to Colorado in the first round.
The 2024-25 season was supposed to be another small step forward for Golden and company. The Gators were ranked 21st in the preseason AP Top 25 poll and were picked to finish sixth in the SEC.
In an era of unprecedented roster turnover, Golden hoped roster retention was the key to an overachieving season. He had been able to convince the five-player core of his 2023-24 team, including All-American Walter Clayton Jr., to return to Gainesville for at least one more season.
“For us, going from year two to year three, one of the advantages we thought we had in the offseason was that we had some good young guys in our program,” Golden said at SEC Media Day before the season. “But it all starts with retention, and it all starts with that continuity, and I think any team that is able to build continuity within their program is going to have a better chance of being successful.”
Golden added that if his team could advance in the NCAA Tournament and finish the season higher than the preseason 21st place finish, it would be a good way to show fans that the program is back on the right track. They did much more than that: they won a school-record 36 games, reached the national championship and made Golden the youngest head coach since the legendary Jim Valvano to cut down the nets.
With the historic victory over Houston in the title game, Florida’s “school of football” became one of 10 men’s college basketball programs to win three or more national championships, and joined UConn as the only two programs in the sport to win more than two titles in the last 20 years.
But this time could the lightning stay in the bottle a little longer?
Golden lost the three leading scorers from his national title-winning team to graduation, but was able to convince all three members of his stellar frontcourt to return to Gainesville for one more year. The additions of transfer guards Boogie Fland (Arkansas) and Xaivian Lee (Princeton) struggled to gel early in the season, but found their groove during conference play. The Gators won 11 straight games to finish the regular season and ultimately earn the top seed in the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. The dream of back-to-back titles for the second time in two decades came to a halt with a surprising 1-point loss to Iowa in the second round.
Any concerns that the window on Florida’s second run of elite success might be closing were dispelled almost immediately after the team’s exit from the tournament.
Alex Condon, Reuben Chinyelu and Thomas Huagh, widely considered the best forward trio in the country, announced they would reject the NBA and the transfer portal in favor of returning to Florida for one more chance at a second title. Fland, who starred for the Gators down the stretch of the 2025-26 season, also announced he would return, citing “unfinished business.” Golden will also bring back reserve guard Urban Klavzar, and while he needs a waiver to play, he could also bring back guard Denzel Aberdeen, a key reserve on the 2025 championship team who spent last season at Kentucky.
This unprecedented level of roster retention in the NIL/transfer portal era has made the Gators the No. 1 “too soon” team for the 2026-27 season.
Golden isn’t the only head coach talking about the importance of roster retention in this brave new world of college basketball, but he has executed that “secret sauce” mix better than anyone in the country over the past three years. The result is that Florida basketball is potentially positioned for its best run of sustained success, one that could propel it even higher up the college basketball totem pole of all time.