After choosing to play FIU and Illinois in secret scrimmages over the past month, Florida coach Todd Golden jokingly wondered if closing the doors really did make a difference.
“My hope is FIU and Illinois didn’t share our tape,” Golden said, smiling. “I’d be interested to see how much Arizona offered maybe a young GA at Illinois to maybe send that tape off the record. You never know. You think about things that other people might do.”
Golden was joking and, when told of Golden’s comment, UA coach Tommy Lloyd noted with a smile that “I haven’t met that GA.”
Still, both coaches’ remarks spoke to the extreme competitiveness between college basketball coaches, who now have to weigh keeping preseason exhibition games closed so nobody can see their emerging new teams, or opening them up to fans, television coverage — and future opponents — to make some money.
“It’s kind of the debate and conversation that a lot of schools are having right now,” Golden said. “Do we use these two opportunities to create revenue and to put eyeballs on our program? Or, for us with a new team — we’re just really trying to make sure we put our best foot forward Monday night — and it’s like, ‘Do I really want Arizona seeing us play 80 minutes in the preseason?’
“I think (playing closed scrimmages) gives you a better opportunity to clean some things up and worry a little bit less about the outside noise in these contests that don’t count.”
Golden’s philosophy means Arizona could be at a little bit of a competitive disadvantage for its season opener Monday against Florida, because UA decided to sell tickets and open up McKale Center for its exhibition games against Saint Mary’s and Embry-Riddle.
Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd talks with one of the game officials during a Wildcat free throw in the second half of their exhibition game, October 18, 2025, Tucson, Ariz.
Lloyd indicated he’s fine with that, saying he wanted to take advantage of a new NCAA rule allowing open exhibitions against Division I schools by playing Saint Mary’s. That game, and the UA-Embry-Riddle exhibition, were streamed on ESPN+, easily available to anyone with some sort of subscription and an internet connection.
“Obviously everything we’ve done has been on TV so far and I just think about our fans when we make those decisions,” Lloyd said. “I don’t know what trade secret you’re gonna gain. You probably gain a little bit watching a game or two. But to me, there’s more value in our fans being able to watch us play.”
Through ESPN+, the Gators have gained knowledge of all seven Arizona freshmen. They’ve likely watched how Lloyd experimented with both Tobe Awaka and Motiejus Krivas against Embry-Riddle, and probably noticed that Krivas grabbed 17 rebounds against Saint Mary’s when Awaka was out.
Among other things.
Arizona forward Koa Peat (10), left, guard Brayden Burries (5) and center Motiejus Krivas (13) make things hard for Saint Mary’s guard Tony Duckett (2) as he drives to the basket during the first half of their exhibition game, Oct. 18, 2025, at McKale Center.
“We’ve seen them play,” Golden said. “We know their personnel pretty well.”
While the same isn’t true for Arizona, it is only technically so. UA associate head coach Jack Murphy said he has been “flying blind” while serving as the lead game scout for this one but in one sense, the UA staff has comfort.
All they might really have to do is look in the mirror.
“The way they play, their style of play, is very similar to how we play. Eerily similar,” Murphy said. “They’re going to be tough, they’re going to be physical. They’re going to try and duck you in with their bigs. They’re going to try and get their guards an advantage on the perimeter. They’re going to play downhill at you. You have to be tough, and you have to be prepared.”
This is no coincidence. Before launching a coaching career that put him in charge of Florida’s program in 2022 at age 36, Golden had left Phoenix Sunnyslope High School to become a point guard at Saint Mary’s. With the Gaels, he competed regularly against Gonzaga coach Mark Few and his then-assistant, Lloyd, in WCC competition from 2004-05 to 2007-08.
Lloyd says he still remembers Golden well from those days.
“He was more of a shooter,” Lloyd said. “I remember one game they upset us down at Saint Mary’s, and I think they literally pitched a perfect game. I think he was like 4 for 4 from 3. …You can look that up and see how good my memory is, but I’m pretty sure that happened.”
Lloyd’s memory was actually pretty good. Saint Mary’s beat Gonzaga three times over eight matchups with the Zags during Golden’s playing days, including an 89-85 overtime win at Saint Mary’s during the 2007-08 season — when Golden went 6 for 6 from 3-point range.
After leaving Saint Mary’s to play two years professionally in Israel, then bouncing around the San Francisco Bay area in sales and marketing jobs, Golden soon found himself competing in the WCC against Gonzaga again, this time as a coach.
Golden joined Kyle Smith’s Columbia staff for two seasons, then worked under Bruce Pearl at Auburn for two seasons before rejoining Smith at USF in 2015-16. There, Golden was an assistant coach who dealt with Gonzaga regularly, and after Smith left for Washington State in 2019-20, he began facing the Zags as USF’s head coach, doing so his first year when Lloyd was still on Few’s staff.
No doubt, in a profession where coaches regularly borrow from each other, some things were absorbed.
“I think when you compete against the same people over and over, sometimes you see the styles start to meld a little bit,” Lloyd said. “There’s a lot of aspects. They’re comfortable playing with bigs. They’re comfortable playing with a lot of similar concepts within their flow offense like maybe we do, or that Gonzaga does.”
The difference is that Golden — armed with that competitiveness, his well-regarded deployment of analytics and the high-level resources of an SEC program — already has a national championship.
He was just 39 when he snipped the nets down last April, and then retained preseason all-American big man Alex Condon and pulled in highly valued guards Xaivian Lee and Boogie Fland out of the transfer portal for this season.
Florida head coach Todd Golden, middle, screams as he and players celebrate after winning the NCAA Tournament against Houston in April.
Ranked third nationally in the AP’s preseason Top 25, the Gators would surprise few people if they won a back-to-back title next spring to join UConn (2023 and 2024) and themselves (2006 and 2007) as the only programs to do so in more than three decades.
Already, Lloyd said, he has a “ton of respect” for what Golden has done.
“He’s a really talented young coach and he’s found a really good identity for how he wants to play with his teams,” Lloyd said. “Obviously, they built a team that was capable of winning the national championship. And being capable of winning it and winning it are two different things, and they got it done.”
So that’s something else Lloyd knows about Golden, something that he doesn’t need recent game video to determine.
But he says it’s also not what really matters now. Not in November anyway.
“The main thing is, it’s the first game of the year, and your team has to be ready to play,” Lloyd said. “And I don’t think we’re a slouch. I think we force the other team to make some decisions.
“Just because they’ve seen us play a couple times, maybe they’ve got it figured out. Maybe they don’t. We’ve just got to go out and play the game.”
