During his time with the Florida Gators, Todd Golden has utilized the transfer portal yearly to overhaul the roster. This past season, Golden landed Alijah Martin and Rueben Chinyelu to join a starting five that included Walter Clayton Jr. and Will Richard, all of whom came to Gainesville after starting their college career elsewhere.
But for as much as Golden uses the transfer portal, he normally doesn't go after "the big fish" and has usually opted to carefully calculate how to fit pieces together.
That narrative might change as the pieces are starting to come together for Golden to land his biggest name yet out of the portal.
Florida Basketball looks to land Boogie Fland
Last week, we highlighted a rumor that Arkansas guard Boogie Fland was commanding up to $7 million in NIL money. The rumor was that Fland was linked to Florida, but multiple insiders quickly shot down that price tag.
The part about being linked to Florida, however, hasn't been shot down, and one of the subplots to Fland's transfer portal oddyssey is that he is also a potential NBA Draft pick and is in Chicago for the NBA Combine.
After Monday's workouts, Fland decided he was going to return to college basketball as he pulled himself out of the remainder of the Combine and the NBA Draft.
It just so happened that Golden is also in Chicago, we're assuming to support the other Gators also in the Combine. He also threw out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game.
Twitter account Rob Reinhart, which is considered to be primarily a troll account, tweeted out that Fland to Florida is virtually a done deal. Maybe it is, perhaps it isn't, but there is another piece to the puzzle that has Gator fans excited about the chances of landing Fland:
Mike Miller is Boogie Fland's agent.
Yes, that Mike Miller who led the Gators to the national title game in 2000 before going on to a 17-year NBA career.
There are plenty of reasons to want Fland on the roster. He had an injury he sustained against Florida that derailed his freshman campaign, but prior to the injury, he had at least 15 points in eleven of his first seventeen games off 37% shooting, which was north of 40% prior to the injury.
With a nearly five-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio and an assist-to-made-field-goal ratio of over one, Fland can also distribute and would instantly become a great guard to pair up Xaivian Lee with.
There is still a long way to go to land Fland, and expect all the other big guns to also go after Fland now that his status is clear, but the Gators feel closer today than they did at the start of the week.