Todd Golden Reacts to Florida's Record-Breaking Win Over PVAMU in NCAA Tournament

TAMPA, Fla.-- The Florida Gators on Friday opened up the NCAA Tournament in dominant fashion, beating 16-seed Prairie View A&M, 114-55, to advance to the Round of 32.

Florida's 114 points and 29 assists set program records in the NCAA Tournament, while its 59-point win is the second-largest victory in tournament history.

After the win, head coach Todd Golden took to the podium to recap the game. Here's what they said, with a transcript from ASAP Sports.

Todd Golden

Opening Statement:

TODD GOLDEN: Really pleased with the way our players performed tonight. I thought we did a really good job of just executing and playing with great intent from start to finish. We didn't do a good job the first couple minutes guarding the three-point line, and once we righted that, we accomplished what we needed to, played with great intent offensively, 29 assists, only seven turnovers, controlled the glass the way we hoped to, and just played really efficient basketball on both sides.

Q. Coach, Iowa coming up, Ben plays a very deliberate style of offense. How do you go about preparing for that off a game where you guys had offense free-flowing pretty much the entire game?

TODD GOLDEN: Honestly, I've not thought a lot about Sunday yet. We just finished playing 15 minutes ago. We'll get back, we'll eat, we'll rest, and we'll get to work on that tomorrow. But yeah, it definitely will be a battle of tempo, a battle of pace, and obviously Ben is a great coach. Bennett is a great player. They've played really good basketball, and it's going to be a great challenge for us.

Q. Would you talk about how well you shared the ball tonight. The ball moved well, unlike it was in Nashville. This time the ball just moved very, very well all the way around.

TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, I thought our biggest issue in Nashville was just ball security more than anything else, and I thought tonight we did a really good job of limiting our turnovers and playing together and just making the simple plays. We call it hitting singles, taking what the defense gives us and living with that. Early on, I think we had a 38-0 paint advantage in the first half scoring-wise, so we weren't settling, we were getting good shots, and I thought we played with great purpose all night. I was really proud of our guys that came in off the bench the last 10 minutes. They didn't let it slip. Our young guys played great and really kept us in our offense and were solid defensively for the most part. Collectively it was a really good effort from a lot of guys tonight.

Q. Coach, this may be an oversimplification, but last year in the tournament you were the hunter. This year you're one of the top 4 seeds. You're a hunted. Does that cause different mentality among your players, getting ready for that?

TODD GOLDEN: Well, we were a No. 1 seed last year, too, so at this point in the year, we had become the hunted. I thought early on in the tournament it was an issue for us. I didn't think we played great in Raleigh last year and then we started playing better throughout the rest of the year. This team has experienced a lot of different emotions that way. This year we were the hunted early on. We didn't play great. I feel like we kind of fell off people's radars and we got back to being the underdogs and the hunters, and fast forward, we got back to that 1 seed line and then we had to adjust to that.

I thought in Nashville we were just okay that way, but I feel like our mentality has been really good since then. I thought we had a great week of productive practice. Like our guys said, we knew what we had to get back to doing. We are at our best when our identity is being a really gritty defensive team that cleans up the glass and gets out in transition, and when we do that, we're going to be tough to beat. We were able to do that tonight.

Q. I noticed you kind of chuckled when I brought up -

TODD GOLDEN: The definition?

Q. Yeah. Do you feel like -- yeah, maybe there's this top seed, No. 1 seed, but do you feel like you guys wanted to come out here and say, hey, we're here and we're ready to try to repeat?

TODD GOLDEN: Well, we needed to play better. Like, we had been playing great, and when you're winning, I feel like there's times where there's certain aspects or certain parts of your team or -- might not be as sharp as you want them to be, but it's hard to be too critical or focus on those things because you're just winning the games. I feel like that's what happened to us over the last couple weeks going into the conference tournament. Obviously as we've talked about a lot back in Gainesville, we don't ever want to lose, to kind of learn from that and get better. We want to continue to win. But when you do, you've got to take some things from it and find ways to improve, and I think we did that this past week. Our guys were really attentive at practice. They did a really good job of focusing on the areas that we as a staff thought we needed to improve upon. We played with great intent tonight, and when we do that, we're pretty tough.

Q. I know it's not the O Dome, but what was the environment like inside the arena, especially before the game leaving the hotel and having the Gator Walk out there?

TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, it was incredible, to be honest. I've talked to, whether it's my staff or our administration about we traveled a lot early in the year. We went out to Vegas, California, we were up in New York, and to be able to stay in Florida, a bus ride from campus to come here to Tampa is just fantastic for our program. The support that we receive here is incredible. To your point, leaving the hotel, it was as good if not better than our hotel in San Antonio last year walking out for the championship game. It was incredible.

Then to walk on the floor and have a majority of our fans here and supporting us is a great advantage, and we really appreciate all the support that our fans have provided us over the season.

Q. Coach, from a coaching standpoint, was it hard to get the guys you needed to get the minutes they needed tonight with the way the score was?

TODD GOLDEN: You know what, I thought we were able to balance it really well. We were able to get out to a comfortable lead and it allowed us to keep everybody's minutes under 25, which when you only have a day rest in between, I think is really important. So we should be really fresh on Sunday. We came out of it unscathed. We'll practice tomorrow, but I feel like we're in a really good spot going into Sunday from a health and from a freshness standpoint.

Q. A lot of great rebounders at Florida, but Rueben for 19 double-doubles. What does that say about him as a player, and what has his physicality meant during the course of the season?

TODD GOLDEN: Rueb is, as you know, just a fantastic player, a relentless worker and has just improved so much since he's got here to where he is now. It's just really hard to wear him down. He does a great job of wearing his opponents down. In the first half when we started getting stops, it felt like he was getting every defensive rebound, he was getting good outlets and getting us out in transition. But 14 and 13, I thought he did a really good job of controlling the paint and staying aggressive on the glass, and he's at his best when he's playing that way.

Q. In your opening statement you said, once you got the three-point defense squared away; what did that entail? They probably weren't going to go shoot 70 percent from three the rest of the game.

TODD GOLDEN: Yeah, we didn't do a good job of being attached, and to their credit, they haven't been a team that has shot a lot of threes. They've been more kind of a mid-range or get-to-the-rim type team, and I think Condo was gapping a little bit too much and helping a little bit too much. I think he was probably responsible for some of those. I thought X gambled on one, and then Micah was in a position in a ball screen coverage that he's not usually in, so maybe a little flukey. But to their credit, they knocked them down. I thought we were playing great, and I looked up and it was 15-15. It was addressed at that time-out, and we gave up 15 points in the first five minutes of the game, and then we gave up six points in the next 13 minutes of the game. So once we did a good job guarding the line, we knew it was going to be tough for them to finish over us at the rim, and our guys did a great job executing that defensive plan once we started guarding the line better.

Q. I've been with you since you've been here, and I can't remember an 18-0 run, a 10-0 run and a 17-0 run, not only in the same game but in the same half. Have you had anything like that before?

TODD GOLDEN: No, I don't think so. We've been a pretty good kill shot team all year. We started giving some up, which is really disconcerting, but obviously tonight we were better that way. But we have the ability to go on some runs, and we're at our best when we do that. I have not been a part of a team that's put three together like that in a half. As I said, I thought our guys did a great job of staying mentally focused even when we got a big lead and playing the right way