RALEIGH, N.C. – From the moment he took the University of Florida job, Todd Golden talked about elevating the Gators’ basketball program back to among the best in the country. To national-championship contenders. Like they used to be.

Like Connecticut is now.  

That ol’ saying, “To be the champ, you gotta beat the champ?” That’s the cross road the top-seeded Gators (31-4) find themselves in the NCAA West Region, where the two-time reigning NCAA-champion and 8-seeded Huskies (24-10) await in Sunday’s second-round showdown at Lenova Center. 

[Read senior writer Chris Harry‘s “Pregame Stuff” setup here]

UF, winner of seven straight and 13 of the previous 14, will go in as a near double-digit favorite against a UConn program that Friday night defeated Oklahoma to win its 13 consecutive NCAA game, tying the 68-field tournament mark set by Duke over a three-season stretch from 1991-93. The Blue Devils did not win a 14^th, so the Gators stand between Coach Dan Hurley and his players making more college hoops history. No team since UCLA’s incomparable rampage of 10 titles over 12 seasons (1964-75) has won three national championships in a row.

Florida coach Todd Golden, meanwhile, will be trying to win a second straight NCAA game after winning the first of his career (like most everyone else in the UF locker) with Friday night’s 95-69 defeat of Norfolk State.

“Even though we might be favored, I think a lot of people still believe that UConn is going to win this game because of their track record, because of Coach Hurley and the success that they’ve had,” Golden said Saturday. “It’s on us to make sure we go out there and show what we’re capable of. I think they’ve done so well, they’ve been so consistent. Obviously, Coach Hurley has been here before. They have multiple players that have won national championships that expect to win this time of year. For us, this is a relatively new position.”

UConn’s championship run began two years ago in Albany, New York, where the Huskies dispatched of Iona, led by sophomore guard Walter Clayton Jr., in opening-round play. Crazy how paths converge sometimes.  

“They’re a great offensive team that runs a lot of things to try to confuse you,” UF’s first-team All American said. “They’re very aggressive on defense, too.”

By all numbers and advanced metrics, though, this Connecticut team is not as strong or deep as the one Clayton last faced; or as dominant as last season’s back-to-back squad, for that matter. 

But Clayton is not the same player he was back then, either. And Florida is not the same team that same ’22-23 Huskies squad ran roughshod over, 75-54, in Gainesville 10 games into Hurley’s first national-championship season. 

“We understand the challenges that Florida presents. The tape does not lie. The analytics and the efficiency of their offense and defense, all that stuff does not lie,” Hurley said of a UF team that is one of only two in the nation (along with No. 1 Duke) rated in the top 10 in both offense (1^st) and defense (10^th) efficiency. “We know that it’s not a best-of-seven, and we’ve faced the same type of pressure that Todd and his team are facing playing these games. Todd knows what type of team he’s got. I knew what type of team I had the last couple years, and when you know you’ve got a squad, that’s like a real thing when you get to these round of 32, Sweet 16, like, you know you’ve got a squad. I can relate to what he’s experiencing, right now.”

UConn has a handful of players who had a hand in one or both titles, led by savvy forward Alex Karaban, who has started 109 consecutive games. The circumstances for Karaban and his teammates are much different this time around.

The Huskies finished second to St. John’s in the Big East Conference, with six league losses. Back in November, the team went to the Maui Invitational and lost three games in three days – against Memphis, Colorado and Dayton – to equal its most defeats in all of the ’23-24 season. At the tournament, Hurley famously lost his composure. “Viral moments,” he would later call them. He’s had others since, and they’ve taken away from the accomplishments of his team. 

The Huskies were 10-6 in league play a month ago, but finished the regular season with four wins, then lost to Creighton in the conference tournament’s second round. 

The Gators, of course, won the SEC Tournament in resounding fashion, giving this second-rounder the look of a mismatch. The Huskies, with their winning pedigree (especially in March), know better.

So do the Gators, actually. 

“It’s definitely less pressure, but I felt like we’ve been the underdog ever since we came back from Maui,” Karaban said. “We’re used to being the underdogs for the majority of the season. It’s not really a new stage for us this year.”

On the other side, the Gators have one of deepest and most versatile teams in college basketball. They demonstrated in claiming 17 victories in the sawmill SEC that they can win a track meet or a rock fight. 

UF was at its best for the first 15 minutes of Friday night’s opener, rushing to a 32-point lead before something happened. Maybe the Gators got bored. Whatever the case, they allowed the undermanned and undersized Spartans to scored 11 straight points to end the half, shoot 50% in the second period and got out-scored 48-36 in the paint. 

The result still was a 26-point victory, but will there be carryover in UF’s sloppiness? And could it survive should UConn come with carryover from its championship run? 

“I think our guys do a good job of raising to the level of our competition, making sure that we compete at an insanely high level,” Golden said. “They understand that if we don’t do that against

UConn, we’re going to be going home.”

Or as UF fifth-guard Alijah Martin put it, “We have our hands full.”

That’s the right attitude to do. The Gators also believe the Huskies will have their hands full, too. Their body of work to date says so. 

“Our goal was to try to build something similar [to UConn],” Golden said. “I feel like we are in a really good spot right now.”

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu