![Florida head coach Todd Golden celebrates his 100th win and beating Mississippi State 108-77 with Florida center Rueben Chinyelu (9) and the rest of the team after an NCAA mens basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_255,w_2666,h_1499/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01kjwxgjmw8ash563q3v.jpg "Florida head coach Todd Golden celebrates his 100th win and beating Mississippi State 108-77 with Florida center Rueben Chinyelu (9) and the rest of the team after an NCAA mens basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
When Todd Golden was hired by Florida, he wasn’t seen as a home run hire by the bulk of the college basketball world. He was coming off a tournament appearance with San Francisco, and he checked a ton of boxes as a bright mind in the sport, but he didn’t have the cache of some of the other titans of the game.
Fast forward not even four full seasons later, and it is hard to imagine anyone but Golden being the coach of the Gators. He is also a reminder of why Florida, in any sport, should never hang onto an underperforming coach ever again.
Todd Golden is the standard at Florida
Golden’s win over Mississippi State was his 100th win as head coach of the Gators. That made him the fastest coach in Florida history to reach 100 wins, passing some guy named Billy Donovan.
Golden tried to downplay the achievement after the game and tried to keep the focus on the team and the rest of his coaching staff:
“I think it's more of a reflection of the guys that have been in the program and the job our staff has done over the first four years.”
But there is an alternate universe where Florida never has a vacancy because Florida’s administration seemed content with the mediocre results it was getting from the previous coaching staff. Mike White took Florida to the Elite Eight in 2017 and then never made it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament again.
For seven years, Florida fans knew they were watching a slow, plodding offense that often looked like it was playing not to lose rather than to win. But anytime these concerns got brought up, Florida fans were labeled as “toxic” and were told they should just be grateful for 2006 and 2007.
But on a night when White’s current Georgia squad couldn’t score on a possession when Alabama sent out just four players on the court, Florida fans were watching its new coach lift up an SEC regular-season title.
Given the nature of sports, an NBA job could tempt Golden down the road one day, as it did with Donovan. If it does, that’s life.
Just don’t let anyone convince Gator fans that it takes seven years to turn around a basketball team that has everything it needs to be one of the true modern Blue Bloods in the country.