Golden Snubbed for SEC Coach of the Year

The title went to Auburn's Bruce Pearl despite Todd Golden leading the Florida Gators to its best season in over a decade as a national title contender and the Gators beating Auburn in the school's lone meeting this year.

Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden after his team's 90-71 win over Ole Miss. Golden has led Florida to a 27-4 record at the end of the regular season in his third season leading the program. / Kyle Lander / Gators Illustrated

Despite leading the Florida Gators to its highest win percentage since 2013 in his third season leading the program, head coach Todd Golden was not selected for SEC coach of the year. Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl took home the league award, the SEC announced Monday.

Despite winning the season series against Pearl and the Tigers, Golden presumably finished second to his mentor while seeing much larger improvements on the year.

The Gators went from finishing fifth in the SEC a year ago to second this season, winning three more conference games as well as three more games altogether.

They finished four spots ahead of where they were projected to in the pre-season SEC media voting and saw a 22-spot jump in the Kenpom rankings, finishing fourth behind Duke, Auburn and Houston. Additionally, their 27 wins on the year are the most a Gators team has had since 2016.

On the other hand, Auburn moved from second in the SEC last season to first this year, winning two more conference games yet finishing with the same amount of total wins. They finished just one spot ahead of projections and moved up just two spots in the Kenpom rankings. It was their third 27+ win season in the past four years.

While Pearl’s Auburn team finished ahead of Florida and won the SEC, the decision to go with him over Golden will still feel like a snub to Gator Nation.

Since 2018, only two of the coaches to receive the award won the conference, seemingly basing the selection more on impressive improvements than most success. Just last season, Lamot Paris was chosen despite finishing third in the conference, likely due to the surprising year South Carolina had. Though the award is simply titled ‘coach of the year’, it feels as if it is meant for the coach whose team saw the most improvement, a clear indicator towards Golden being the right choice.

In the aftermath of the selection, former Gators wide receiver and now ESPN analyst Chris Doering shared his thoughts on why Golden may be a little overlooked. His full excerpt from SEC This Morning on College Sports on SiriusXM can be read below:

"This guy should be the coach of the year, and the reason he may not be is because... deflecting all the credit to his assistant coaches. What he's talked about in building the roster. People hold against him the amount of talent that he has, the amount of depth that he has, and take that away as 'Oh, he's working with the best players.' Well, you know how he got those best players? He evaluated them at other schools, in other countries, in other continents and brought them to Gainesville knowing they'd be a good fit for the scheme, and even more so, the culture.

"When I watch this Gators team, they are a reflection of him on the sideline. Fiery, diving, energy, competitive all the way until the end. This is a team that we saw come out of nowhere in non-conference schedule, and people took away from what they were doing because they said the non-conference schedule wasn't that difficult. Well, they run through the SEC, they've gone to The Jungle and beaten Auburn, they beat the hell out of Tennessee in Gainesville, they went to Tuscaloosa and beat Alabama.

This guy deserves to be the SEC Coach of the Year, and it's a shame more people aren't talking about it."

Though Golden seemed to be worthy of the award, he will likely be the first to say it isn’t important to a Gators team preparing for a push towards a championship this month. Despite his success being enough to even be considered a snub, the job is not done for a Florida Gators team looking to be remembered for their success in March instead of February and before.

"As we just talked about with our players in the locker room, I want them to be very proud of the effort and the success that we've had to this point, but we have a lot of work left to do and a lot of things left to still accomplish," Golden said on Saturday. "We'll get back together Monday, have a great week of practice and get ready to play next Friday in Nashville."

After locking up the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament, Florida will get a double-bye and won't play until the quarterfinals on Friday. The Gators will play the winner of No. 7 Missouri and No. 10 Mississippi State/No. 15 LSU.

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