Todd Golden values retention over '5-star' talent in NIL, transfer portal era

The Florida Gators are likely to head into the 2026-27 basketball season as the nation’s top-ranked team and one of the favorites to win the national title. Why? It’s quite simple, really. Coach Todd Golden has stacked the roster with talented, experienced players that have opted to return to school for another year.

The frontcourt might be the nation’s best. But it’s the culture element that Golden says is as important to his program as anything. That’s the part that’s hard to replicate.

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“We’ve been really fortunate getting the right guys in our program in Gainesville, with great attitudes, great work ethics,” Todd Golden said on The Brent and Austen Show. “Maybe some underrated guys, but they really wanted to be at Florida. They really appreciate playing together. And that’s allowed us to have great retention over these last couple of years.”

Florida, though, also has a boatload of talent. It’s one thing to get guys to hang around the program. It’s another when they could easily merit an NBA Draft selection.

Such is the case for forward Thomas Haugh, as well as big men Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu. The interesting thing is that Florida has made it a point of developing such prospects under Todd Golden.

Haugh and Condon were part of a three-man 2023 recruiting class at Florida that ranked just 86th nationally. The Gators had an 84th-ranked recruiting class in 2024 and a 112th-ranked recruiting class in 2026. The outlier? A seventh-ranked two-man bunch in 2025.

But the point is that Todd Golden is not necessarily all about the stars. Not when it comes to assembling a winning roster in college these days. Development over time is as key as anything.

“That’s something that we’re going to keep pouring into,” Golden said. “We’ll trade a little bit of a five-star prospect for a guy that wants to be in Gainesville for a number of years and wants to be a part of what we’re building. So hopefully we can continue finding guys like Alex Condon, Tommy Haugh and Rueben Chinyelu as we continue on.”

So far, so good. Florida’s 2026-27 roster is likely to be a strong mix of homegrown talent and transfer portal additions.

Should he get approved for an additional year of eligibility, Denzel Aberdeen figures to start alongside similarly developed and recruited-by-Florida prospects Haugh and Condon. Chinyelu and starting point guard Boogie Fland were both transfers.

Whatever the case, it clearly seems to be working for Todd Golden and the Gators. The team won the national title in 2025 and then repeated as a No. 1 seed for the first time in school history this past season. And with the look of things, next year could be more of the same.