Florida basketball head coach Todd Golden left off Coach of the Year short list
Florida head coach Todd Golden is one of the young coaching stars in college basketball, but leading the Gators to an SEC Tournament title, No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the program's best record in more than a decade wasn't enough to earn him a spot on the Naismith Coach of the Year Award finalists list.
The selection committee announced Auburn's Bruce Pearl, Duke's Jon Scheyer, Houston's Kelvin Sampson and St. John's Rick Pitino as the four finalists on Monday. It's hard to ignore that Florida is the only No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament not to see its coach get the nod, instead adding Pitino after his second year with St. John's.
In the era of name, image and likeness and the transfer portal, Golden has mastered both and assembled one of the deepest rosters in the country. Don't forget that Florida's All-America guard, Walter Clayton Jr., played for Pitino at Iona and nearly followed the legendary head coach to St. John's. Instead, Golden and his staff pushed for the Florida native to return home and won the recruiting battle.
Golden is doing everything a program could ask, and he's not even 40 years old yet. Perhaps the selection committee figures that Golden will be a mainstay in the award race for years to come. It's hard to make sense of the obvious snub any other way.
Of course, Golden won't be complaining any time soon about the decision to leave him off the shortlist. He's too busy trying to win a national championship and get his team set for next year. Florida could lose four of five starters from this year's team, and Golden has already secured the NIL funds to attack the portal and reload the team for another run. Raising the national championship trophy would mean a lot more than winning the Coach of the Year Award to him anyway.
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Florida basketball's Todd Golden not a Coach of the Year finalist
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