GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Todd Golden really likes his transfer-portal acquisitions. Micah Handlogten is set to take a medical red-shirt year. And there’s still a wait-and-see element with his 2024-25 Florida basketball squad.
Those were the big takeaways from Golden’s media opportunity Friday, the Florida head coach’s first since the Gators’ heart-breaking, season-ending, last-second loss to Colorado in the NCAA Tournament on March 22.
“I think we’ve gotten better,” Golden said.
That should be of encouragement to UF fans who watched the Gators go 24-12, set a program record by scoring 85.6 points a game, play for their first Southeastern Conference championship in a decade and return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years. Eventually, the season closed with a pulsating 102-100 defeat against the Buffaloes, a game UF trailed by 13 with just over four minutes to go, only to have its remarkable comeback thwarted when CU hit the decisive shot with 1.8 seconds remaining.
The loss marked the final collegiate games for a pair of impact grad-transfers in point guard Zyon Pullin and forward Tyrese Samuel, both of whom garnered All-SEC honors. Shortly thereafter sophomore guard Riley Kugel, a top backup, and sophomore forward Aleks Szymczyk, who sat out the season recovering from a broken foot, entered the transfer portal, while a pair of starters in guard Walter Clayton Jr. and wing Will Richard headed into the NBA evaluation process while retaining their eligibility and option to return to the Gators.
Golden and his staff are optimistic both Clayton, the team’s scoring leader at 17.6 points per game, and Richard, 10.9 points in his two seasons as a starter, will be back. With that in mind, the Gators commenced to rebuild around those two, plus standout freshman forwards Alex Condon and Tommy Haugh, plus backup sophomore guard Denzel Aberdeen, who’s expected to assume a much bigger role in the rotation after shining in the postseason.
So much of the prospects for the 2024-25 Florida basketball season tilt on the return of leading scorer Walter Clayton Jr. (1), who led the team with 17.6 points per game, 93 made 3-pointers and 87.7 percent from the free-throw line.
In a perfect world, Handlogten would have been part of that returning nucleus, but the severity of his injury – and the possibility of his recovery going deep into next season – prompted the 7-foot-1 center, who averaged 5.3 points and 6.9…
