It’s insult to injury for the University of San Francisco’s men’s basketball program. The day after being knocked out of March Madness in the first round, in an enthralling, but brutal overtime defeat to Murray State, the program lost its head coach.
Per Matt Norlander of CBS Sports, the University of Florida, a one-time powerhouse program, is poaching USF’s Todd Golden on a reported six-year deal to run the basketball program there.
Golden, a St. Mary’s alum, played professionally for Maccabi Haifa in Israel before getting into coaching. After stints as an assistant at Columbia, Auburn, then San Francisco from 2012-19, he was given the head coaching job in 2019 at the age of 33.
He was a rising star when he took the job at that age, and this season and subsequent hiring to Florida confirmed that status.
As the Dons’ head coach, Golden led them to a 22-12 record and 9-7 conference record in his first season, followed by a rough COVID-19-altered campaign in 2020-21 in which they went 11-14.
But he came back to bring the Dons their first March Madness berth in a quarter of a century this season, as they posted a 24-10 record and a 10-6 conference record. They lost to Gonzaga, arguably the No. 1 team in the country, in the West Coast Conference Tournament semifinals before punching their ticket into the NCAA Tournament.
It will be intriguing to see how USF retools after an impressive season. The program is also losing graduate guard Jamaree Bouyea, who scored a heroic, but unfruitful 36 points in the loss on Thursday night. Bouyea is viewed as a fringe, but potentially draftable NBA player in the late second round.