Florida basketball hires San Francisco’s Todd Golden as head coach

While he may have been a coaching candidate that excited multiple schools, it looks like Todd Golden has chosen to lead the Florida basketball program forward.

Looks like there might be a new Florida basketball coach in Gainesville in the relatively near future.

The Florida Gators made the decision to pursue Todd Golden and they were able to get Golden to leave the San Francisco Dons after a thrilling season that ended Thursday evening in an exciting NCAA Tournament matchup with the Murray State Racers.

Reports of Golden’s hire by the Gators floated around throughout the day Friday, but Florida made the news official when they announced the move Friday afternoon.

The Gators just landed one of the more intriguing coaching candidates available in this coaching change cycle.

Florida basketball: Gators reportedly set to hire Todd Golden away from San Francisco

Golden is pretty young and admittedly doesn’t have an abundance of head coaching experience, but the 36-year-old head coach has been pretty successful with the Dons over the three seasons he was out in San Francisco.

During Golden’s first season with the Dons, San Francisco managed to go 22-12 in 2019-20, but didn’t get a shot at the NCAA Tournament or the NIT and the basketball world was put on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic. San Francisco had significantly less success in Golden’s second year as the Dons went 11-14 overall, but they bounced back and managed to make the NCAA Tournament in 2021-22.

Now Golden will go to Gainesville and coach a program that has pretty high aspirations. He’ll have some impressive resources with the Gators and it’ll be interesting to see how he fares against SEC teams.

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