Everything Todd Golden Said After Beating Alabama in SEC Tournament

What the Florida basketball head coach said after upsetting the Crimson Tide in Nashville.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Florida continued the trend of the day at the SEC Tournament. 

The 6-seed Gators knocked off 3-seed Alabama 102-88 to advance to the semifinals. Here's everything head coach Todd Golden said after beating the Crimson Tide:

Full Transcript

Opening statement:

Incredibly proud of these guys and their teammates for the effort we had tonight. Obviously concerning start going down 8-0 in the first two minutes. After that I thought we played fantastic the rest of the way. A combination of these guys executing our defensive game plan and limiting their three-point attempts and makes, then just offensively the way we played for each other, sharing the ball, getting downhill. 

I think we went on a 17-0 run to end the first half, something along those lines. Great job finishing possessions and making our free throws to never allow the game to get tight. Alabama is a great team, but we beat them pretty comfortably tonight, and I thought it was a great effort from our group.

Q. You signed an extension before this tournament. How good does it feel coming off that to not only win yesterday but confidently beat Alabama like this, show what Florida basketball could be and is right now?

TODD GOLDEN: Obviously it feels great. Appreciate the trust and belief that our administration has in myself and our staff, what we've built in a short period of time.

Obviously last night was a tricky game. It went back and forth. But to push through was a little bit after relief.

This game, to be honest, just less pressure coming into this game. Not saying complete house money, but obviously a really good opponent, a loss doesn't hurt you and a win helps you in a big way.

I felt like our guys played like that after the first couple minutes, felt like it was about us, staying the course.

Obviously it feels good to have a couple wins after that sign of belief in what we're building here. 

Q. You got great vet play from Walter and from Zyon, especially at the free-throw line. Can you speak to what those two young kids did energy-wise during the run.

TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, I think ZP hit it on the head a little bit, they've been doing it all year. I go back to maybe the Virginia game as the one time where they didn't have a great effort out there.

Since then, I think one of the biggest strengths of our team is the fact that we have a great starting front core with Tyrese and Micah. And then when we bring in Tommy and Condo, there's really no drop-off. We're able to continue our stuff. They put great pressure on both backboards, especially on the offensive glass. They play so hard, it's infectious. I think they raise the bar for the older guys at times in terms of setting the tone with how hard they play.

They have been doing this for us all year. It's a big reason why we've been so successful.

Q. You were up 15 points at the first half. With that lead, it's easy to take your foot off the gas. What was the message at halftime?

TODD GOLDEN: Listen, Alabama is not the type of team that you can ever take a breath. When you play them, regardless of whether we had the 15-point lead or not, we knew we were going to have to keep scoring, staying aggressive and playing hard for the remainder of the game if we wanted to win.

Alabama, they scored 55 in the second half. Fortunately we scored 54. It doesn't really affect us much. But we knew we couldn't go into the second half and think about starting to bleed clock or slow it down. We wanted to stay super, super aggressive, which I think we did a really good job of doing over the last 20 minutes.

Q. You've talked about Nashville being an opportunity to return to yourself as a team, wash away the Vanderbilt loss. How important was tonight?

TODD GOLDEN: All these games are really important, you know? I feel like last night we were getting back to it, but we weren't all the way there. A little shaky first half. Better in the second half.

Once we started asserting our will on the glass in the second half, that felt like the team we'd had for the first 30 games of the regular season.

Tonight, after the first two minutes, I felt like we were the team who we've been for the last 30 games. Really the last month and a half of conference play where we really stepped it up.

Just a physical team that plays hard, with no fear of failure. I think our guys did a really good job of that tonight. Even when we got the big lead in the second half, we never relaxed. We kept pushing it, kept staying aggressive, kept getting to the foul line, never really allowed them to make it a game. 

No. 6 Florida Basketball Eliminates Alabama In SEC Tournament