Florida’s new basketball coach Todd Golden has been busy this offseason overhauling a Gator roster that lost a lot and needed even more than was lost. He seems to have done that by keeping some key pieces and bringing in some really nice talent. According to Golden, making the best roster would mean getting big man Colin Castleton to return for another year. Castleton had many options but decided to stay and help try and build something special in Golden’s first year as the head coach continues to look for one more big man.
Florida lost guards Elijah Kennedy, Tyree Appleby, Brandon McKissic, and Phlan Fleming along with forwards Keyontae Johnson, Anthony Duruji, and Tuon Gatkek to graduation or transfer in the offseason. That’s more than half of the scholarship roster, so a lot had to be done.
Despite the big losses, Golden came all the way from San Francisco and used his influence to lure a handful of pretty big names in the transfer portal in guards Will Richards, Trey Bonham and Kyle Lofton while also adding forward Alex Fudge to help make a formidable group. He also was able to add two through the high school ranks in guards Denzel Aberdeen and Riley Kugel, both considered big time signees.
Golden is pretty happy with where they’re at with the roster so far after being able to keep Castleton, forward CJ Felder, center Jason Jitoboh and guards Myreon Jones, Kowacie Reeves, and Niels Lane.
“I think we’re in good shape,” Golden told a contingent of media Thursday. “I would more say we’ve added on to more of what we were able to keep. It was really important to me to make a run at Colin (Castleton) to see if we could get him to use his fifth year. We had a lot of success last year at San Francisco with Jamaree Bouyea, a different position but the same idea of keeping a really talented, mature player that had experienced a lot of success in the program to build around and obviously it helped for us. I thought that Colin could be that piece for us if he was willing to buy into what we are doing and had a great attitude about coming back, which he did. And that really got us off to a really good start.”
Key for Castleton is to get healthy. Offseason surgery on his shoulder area was needed after an injury he suffered in the middle of last season and heroically tried to play through the pain. Thursday brought on a positive update from Golden about Castleton.
“He had surgery, it was a while ago now,” Golden said. “I talked to (trainer Duke Werner) yesterday about it and knock on wood things are going well in terms of his recovery. We’re going to take our time. We don’t need to rush him back for summer workouts. I want him to be super healthy going into the fall and if we can do that, which we are tracking towards, we’ll be in really good shape.”
This list of returners and additions above are a little short on big guys which makes the importance of Jitoboh returning healthy a big deal. When Castleton missed a handful of games last season Jitoboh moved to the starting lineup and played hard and well. He wasn’t a stat hog, but he did the things that allowed his teammates to play well. During the span he started, Jitoboh was also injured when he was scratched in the eye and that ended his season causing him to have surgery as well.
He’s been out, but starting to get back into the swing of things.
“He’s getting close,” Golden said of Jitoboh. “He’s battling the eye deal still a little bit. He’s done a really good job the past couple of weeks with his body, just getting back into shape that way. I’m really encouraged by him in terms of going back last year and seeing how productive he was and how high of a level the team was playing when he was on the floor. If we can keep him healthy, I think he has a chance to be a really impactful player for us this year.”
Those that follow Florida basketball know how hard it was last year when Castleton was out, Jitoboh got hurt, and Felder was also fighting illness and injuries. The roster isn’t exactly deep this year with big guys and Golden is still looking for one more to fill that last scholarship roster spot.
“We’re still a little thin inside,” he said. “I would say we have really good players in the front court but we’re susceptible to an injury or two of being really a big issue for us going into next year with the roster being the way it is. So, we’ll try to add one more big to give us some depth in the front court.”