Somewhat unsurprisingly, Florida men's basketball head coach Todd Golden had an ax to grind after the Gators lost to the UConn Huskies in yet another nail-biting defeat for the defending National Champions.
Following the four-point loss to the Huskies, Golden didn't waste any time making sure his team knew what he thought about a certain... controversial call from the matchup.
As Florida guard Boogie Fland was attempting to inbound the ball with less than 10 seconds on the game clock, he was called for a five-second violation.
Golden erupted, the team was irate, and just like that, the officials had seemingly cemented the Huskies' win over the Gators.
Todd Golden kenw Boogie Fland didn't commit 5-second violation
Immediately, Golden started questioning the refs on the call, insisting that Fland hadn't taken five seconds to inbound the ball. He was stating, as a fact, that the whistle had been premature. However, no matter what the Florida head coach said, the officials stuck by their original decision.
After the game, Golden had an unusual activity for his team; he told them all to time the inbound play, checking to see if anyone got a full five seconds.
"'I challenge everybody to time it and see what they come up with," Golden said in the postgame press conference. "We timed it in the locker room, and we got 4.6 and 4.7 [seconds]."
Now, at the end of the day, officials are still humans and their counting is not an exact science, but cutting Fland's inbound effort short by a quarter of a second or more is pretty egregious, and Golden has refused to back down on the matter.
With the loss to UConn, the Gators dropped to 5-4 on the season, with losses to then-No. 13 Arizona, unranked TCU, then-No. 4 Duke, and now the No. 5 Huskies. To put it lightly, Florida is having a nightmare start to its National Championship-defending season.
Up next, the Gators have a slate of get-right games ahead of them as they're set to face the George Washington Revolutionaries, Saint Francis Red Flash, Colgate Raiders, and Dartmouth Big Green before they tip off SEC play against the Missouri Tigers on January 3.