Experiences With Top Coaches Prepared Todd Golden to Lead Gators

Gators head coach Todd Golden shares how his past experiences under Bruce Pearl and Kyle Smith have equipped him for success at Florida.

Photo: Todd Golden; Credit: Alex Shepherd 

At 36 years old, Todd Golden has been thrust into a leadership position in a high-pressure environment as the Florida Gators head coach.  

Despite his relative inexperience — working in his role atop the San Francisco program for just three years — Golden believes he's ready for the jump from the mid-major level to what he coins "nearly professional athletics" in the SEC.

A significant component of that confidence was his time under Bruce Pearl at Auburn from 2014 to 2016.

Learning from one of the most successful coaches in college basketball right now — from a recruiting and coaching standpoint — Golden shared the experiences from his short stint with the Tigers during his introductory press conference on Wednesday.

"I learned about passion, how to build a program, servant leadership and just overall excitement in how to galvanize a group for the greater good," he said when asked about his takeaways from Pearl. 

"His work ethic is second to none. I remember from the time I got down to Auburn with him; he just didn't sleep. We were living in the same little apartment for a couple of months, and I remember every morning at five, he would be getting up, going to the office. That work ethic was something that I was just so inspired by, and he led the charge. If you weren't keeping up with him, you felt like you weren't doing your job."

Seeing the way Pearl operated, Golden said that he incorporated some of those traits into his everyday operations as a head coach during his time at San Francisco. 

It also gave him a broadened view of how to operate at a school that offered professional-like support, unlike those he was at previously that lacked the resources and financial backing.

"It was a great experience that made me a more complete coach," he said. "It was a completely different ball game. It was going from a low major situation [at Columbia] to a high major, what I consider nearly professional athletics in regards to the way that it's supported, the resources, and it took me a little bit to figure it out and to get comfortable.

"But, by my second year down there with him, I felt great about going out on the road and pitching SEC, pitching Auburn at that time, what we had going on and what we were going to grow to."

He sees that as a benefit for the transition process to Florida from USF.

In his mission to turn around a program that hadn't earned an NCAA Tournament bid since 1998 in a conference that hadn't had an at-large bid from a school not named Gonzaga, Saint Mary's or BYU since 2002, Golden believed Pearl's influence as a player-coach paid dividends for his Dons to break down both barriers this season.

"That's something that I've always taken with me is that dedication to the craft, that working really hard, and also, the player relationship piece like we've talked about a lot today. He was really good at getting guys to play incredibly hard for him and love and trust."

He will now look to bring that vital characteristic to the Gators.

"I think that's something that I was able to take with me to San Francisco and really emulate and do a really good job that way as well, and I'm 100% going to do the same thing here at Florida."

On top of Pearl, Golden has learned under the tutelage of Kyle Smith, a former assistant coach at Saint Mary's during his collegiate career and the San Francisco head coach that brought him on as an assistant in 2016 as the associate head coach of the Don's.

"Both guys are on incredibly different sides of the spectrum in terms of who they are and the way they coach, but they're both incredibly unique in their own right," he said.

While Pearl brought the virtues of a high work ethic, personability and passion for the game, Golden derived the foundation for structure, organization and attention to detail in the program he resides over from Smith's leadership.

Now, he looks to take the best qualities of each of his mentors and incorporate them into what he does as a head coach at Florida.

"What I try to do as a coach is take the best qualities of Kyle, take the best qualities of Bruce and the best qualities of myself, put them in a pot and stir it up. I feel if I can continue to do that over my career, I'll continue to have a lot of success as a coach."

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