Golden is doing well getting us back on track so lets see how his first good team here stacks against our last great coach. This is a look at both guys first tourney teams at Florida. At year 2 in billy Ds career florida had back to back losing seasons. So we're looking at year 3 billy and year 2 Golden. Billy was 34 and Golden 38. Both men are/were in year 5 of their head coaching careers. Both men took over a program that needed a bit of rebuilding. Mike White was Mike White and despite us getting to a final four in '94 led by a HOF coach, the ringless Lon Kruger, Kruger dumped us for Illinois after a losing season in '95.

1998 record was 22-9 .709 10-6 in the sec

2024 record so far is 24-11 .686 11-7 in the sec

1998 stats

80.3ppg (14th out of 311 teams)

70.2 pts against (174 of 311)

Best stat was 2nd in the nation in 3pt fgs made per game

2024

85.1ppg (6th of 362)

78.5 pts against (332nd of 362)

Best stat FG attempts and total rebounds per game are both 2nd in the nation

In terms of total numbers we're 1st in FGs made and 2nd in FGA but teams have played different numbers of games

1998 sec losses (including tourney):

kentucky auburn ole miss Tennessee Vandy Miss St and Arkansas

2024 sec losses (including tourney):

kentucky auburn ole miss Tennessee Vandy Texas A&M Alabama and South Carolina

Both teams finished the regular season going 3-3 in their last 6 games. Both teams lost to losing record vanderbilt teams on the road by 1 point to end the season. Including the tourney they shared 5 common loss opponents with Auburn Tennessee Ole Miss Vandy and Kentucky

Billy made it to the sec semifinals before falling

Golden made it to the sec finals before falling

Billy was much better OOC only losing to Duke

Golden lost to Virginia Baylor and Wake

Billy made it into the tournament as a 6 seed. Golden as a 7 seed

There are a lot of similarities and differences. The finish to the regular season and the vandy loss are uncanny. Both were offensively good and defensively mediocre/poor. Billy favored beyond the arc scoring and Golden favored the paint with a lot of rebounding. Surprisingly our best player Mike "Mike" Miller was the worst at the 3 ball of the 4 starters that actually shot 3s in '98. The 5th starter, Udonis Haslem, pretty much never shot 3 and was 0%

Biggest difference I see is the 3 ball. Billys team was near the top of the nation in that whereas Golden is 156th in 3pt made and 157th in 3pt attempted

Goldens team gets to the line a lot being 8th in FT made 6th in FT attempts and 218th in FT %. Billy was upper middle class in that at 31st 46st and 81st respectively. We overwhelm teams with volume of FTs even if we kind of suck at making them relative to other teams. Thats only a comparison to teams that year though. Billys 1st tournament team was actually worse at making FTs overall. They were 70.3% per game and the 2024 team are 71.2%. Things were different back in the day

TL:DR Overall he does appear to be on track. He's definitely ahead of where billy was through the same number of years and the two Florida tourney teams are similar but with different approaches. Continued growth is what we need to watch out for. Billy took a massive jump after that year. As for this years team the injury in the SECCG might trip us up. We shall see.

Prediction: Florida makes it to the sweet 16 this year and the national championship next year

Sources used:

The 1998 team

The 2024 team