Chris Doering passionately advocates for Todd Golden as SEC Coach of the Year over Bruce Pearl

Monday brought the SEC announcing awards for the 2024-2025 season. Bruce Pearl walked away with some hardware, earning SEC Coach of the Year honors over some capable candidates. Florida‘s Todd Golden certainly was in the running but ultimately fell short.

Chris Doering still went to bat for Golden, saying he should have won Coach of the Year. He says some credit should be given out for assembling such a talented roster — one Florida took worldwide. Golden is one to deflect all praise to assistant coaches and Doering believes that hurt his COTY case.

“This guy should be the coach of the year and the reason he may not be… deflecting all the credit to his assistant coaches when he’s talked about building the roster,” Doering said. “People hold that against him the amount of talent that he has, the depth of talent that he has. ‘Oh, he’s working with the best players.’

“Well, you know how he got those best players? He evaluated them at other schools, in other countries, in other continents and brought them to Gainesville knowing they’d be a good fit for the scheme and even more so, the culture.”

Florida saw two players named to All-SEC teams. Walter Clayton was first-team while Alex Condon was honored with the third team. The talent runs much deeper than those two though, as two others average double-figure scoring.

Looking at the results, Florida was dominant at times during SEC play. Going 14-4 against conference foes has the Gators heading to Nashville as the two-seed. Doering points out three of those wins are against the other teams getting double-byes in the SEC Tournament.

“They’ve run through the SEC,” Doering said. “They’ve gone to The Jungle and beaten Auburn, they beat the hell out of Tennessee in Gainesville, they went to Tuscaloosa and beat Alabama. This guy deserves to be the SEC Coach of the Year and it’s a shame more people aren’t talking about it.”

Not having a strong nonconference schedule meant Florida flew under the radar for a few weeks early in the season. They entered the AP poll top 10 on Dec. 9 and have yet to leave as the regular season comes to a close.

On the flip side, Auburn has been making headlines from the get-go due to an elite nonconference schedule. Maybe the difference between Pearl and Golden winning the award, at least in Doering’s opinion.

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