Florida Gators Coach Gets REAL About Todd Golden, CJ Ingram & This Year's Roster!

But, yeah, Coach McRae, I really appreciate you taking the time with us here on High Top Sports. You know, we're the top Florida Gator podcast. We've had, you know, Coach Sumrall, Coach Meyer on in the past, and they've been expanding into basketball. I'm kind of the basketball guy. I work for a junior college in Daytona, Daytona State. I don't know if you're familiar, but that was actually where I wanted to start off because I saw that one of your first coaching positions was actually at Chipola up in Marianna. Yes. And I wanted to ask you, because I lived in Dothan, Alabama for a while. And Marianna, what was it like living there right out of post-grad? I can't imagine super fun. It was super slow, man. But we had a really good group of guys. Actually, if you wanted to have a drink with your buddies, you had to go to Dothan, Alabama for Marianna. It was a dry city. But we won a lot of games. My roommate is the head coach at Iowa State currently, T.J. Austinberger. That was my roommate at Chipola Junior College. Greg Heyer was the head coach. He won the state championship. So we had a great, great season. Yeah, and they still have a great program. I mean, Coach Heyer, he's at, I think it was Trinity Valley now. He won the national title last year in JUCO. So still out there pumping it up, man. And, like, that is something going from JUCO and now being, you know, a Division I national champion. I mean, what has that ride been like? And, I mean, there's a lot of stops along the way that I also want to cover because you've been all over the place and coached for some great guys. But, I mean, I feel like in this Transfer Portal era, JUCO coaches might have a little bit of an edge because, They're used to assembling a team, you know, six weeks in advance and getting them to perform. How do you think that that that that might change the, you know, the landscape of coaching? Well, you know, no, you're right. It's definitely the climate of coaching right now that you're going to have a new roster every year. Obviously, that's normal in Juco life to have a new team every single year because guys usually only with you for one or two years. So that's definitely. The climate of college basketball is just something that you have to adjust to and something that you have to embrace as a coach. Well, I think that's really cool. And then, I mean, so you went from there, and then you coached. You were a private trainer. I saw that you actually coached John Wall and Dwight Howard in Atlanta. Is that right? So I was blessed to train both of them before the draft. I did their pre-draft, both John Wall and Dwight Howard, both number one draft picks. So, yeah, that was a blessing. But I worked out from young ladies to young boys to grown men. I mean, I... Trained everybody, man. So that's how I started in the business. And that's, I mean, that's just, I can't imagine, like, you know, because sometimes working these JUCO games, I get to be, you know, right up in, you know, I got to go to Daytona State's practice a couple weeks ago. And it's just truly remarkable. You see some of the athleticism. I mean, what was it like seeing John Wall as, like, a raw athlete? Or, you know, Dwight Howard, who is, to my knowledge, still one of the most imposing figures we've ever seen in basketball in his day. So with Dwight, you know, Dwight was so athletic, so strong. And, you know, at the time, you know, he was really lean because, you know, it was right out of high school. He went right out of high school to the NBA. My my main focus for Dwight was to get him in the best shape of his life. A guy from UConn was projected the number one draft pick, and I just figured if we could get Dwight in the best shape of his life, when they see his athleticism, the Orlando Magic who had the number one pick, when they saw his athleticism, I figured they would draft him number one. Now with John Wall. John Wall is so fast. When I would do my workouts, I was like, man, I can't get this guy to go hard. I was like, why can't I get this guy to go harder? So I jumped in the workout with him, tried to guard him, and I realized he's just so fast and he makes it look so effortlessly. So he was just a great person to be in the gym, one of the best athletic point guards to ever play the game. Truly. I mean, he was, he was always just a special, I mean, he was one of those guys that took over American culture. You know, you had the dance, the song, everything. It was, everything was John Wall, even though, you know, being a Gator fan my whole life, I still loved watching him play. It was a part of that Calipari teams that were just absolutely bonkers. And Dwight Howard gave me probably my best memories as a Magic fan. Like the 2009 run was awesome. And then, so then you go from there and then you're at, was UCLA next under Ben Howland? Is that right? I went to my alma mater at Mercer University. I coached there for a year. Mm-hmm. And then I went from there back to my youth organization, Atlanta Celtics, to UCLA with Ben Howland. Ben Howland's been a mentor to me up until even now. He's my mentor and somebody I keep in touch with, somebody I talk to at least two or three times a month. And I learned so much from him. Does he ever, you know, give you flack for coaching for Florida now, the team that, you know, had his number in back-to-back Final Fours? Absolutely. He told me that, you know, that it was really hard to cheer for us in a national championship game. But because of me, he was cheering for Florida. And so that meant the world to me. I love him to death, man. I've learned so much from him for working for him both at UCLA and Mississippi State. Yeah, and then you also coached under, what is it, Johnny Jones at LSU, the legend from Texas Southern, won back-to-back SWAC titles a couple years ago. I mean, dude, your resume of coaches you've been under, so where do you think Todd ranks up? I mean, because, you know, you've got Leonard Hamilton, Greg Heyer, Ben Howland, all these guys. Like, Todd Golden, what sets him apart from a lot of these coaches in the modern-day game? Because, obviously, it's a lot different than when you were coaching under Ben Howland. Right. Todd is an analytical, smart, brilliant guy. Um, I've learned so much from that side, um, from working with Todd, uh, coach Howland coach, um, Hamilton is more of an older, older guys. I caught him at the end of there, uh, especially, um, coach Howland at his last, uh, nine years of coaching. I worked for him his last nine years of coaching, but to be able to work with Todd and build this thing at the university of Florida to be here day one with him, um, and just see He runs his program and how we, you know, we make decisions based off numbers, how we want to defend, you know, what we look to do offensively. You know, a lot of our principles is based off the numbers. I've learned so much and I'm so blessed to be able to work with Coach Golden. But I mean, it sounds like he's blessed to be working with you too, man. I mean, like you look at the numbers, don't lie. You look at some of those players that you've coached. I mean, it's really impressive. And so kind of parlaying that into, you know, this year for Florida. So you look at, you know, the roster is very similar to what it was last year. We returned, whatever it was, 82% of the production. Yes. How do you, you know, because, like, the team last year was so good. What did you guys work on really a lot in the offseason? Because, I mean, when you have the number one overall seed, you know, you win the SEC. How do you possibly go in there and say, hey, guys, we got to get even better? Like, what does that process look like for you guys in the offseason? Congratulations, boys and girls, because this show is brought to you by PrizePicks. And I congratulate you because you finally made it to college football season, boys and girls. Yes, that is right. You can now get in on the action on PrizePicks with college football. It is time to get up after it. This week, we're rocking and rolling, feeling pretty good. But our guy, Micah Alejandro from Hawaii. Then we've got, of course, King Miller with USC. Get some rush touchdowns. I know we don't like FSU around these parts, but I think Ashton Daniels is going to use a little legs in this upcoming week for some nice football to get him more in his rushing yards. You can now get in on the action with PrizePicks for the rushing season. And individual games. And on the app, you can pick your team to just win the game outright when you use that code HMA. Download the app today using the link in the description. You play $5. You get $150 if you win that lineup for brand new users. And take advantage. Ride with the crowd. Okay? Use the great features that PrizePicks has to offer. PrizePicks. It is good to be around. Well, I mean, the good thing is we all have the same mindset. We want to win, you know. You know, and we don't want to look to. The NCAA tournament, you know, in October, November, we take it one game at a time. Right now we're focusing on getting ready for Miami. But we just want to, you know, continue to work hard, get the guys on the same page, both what we want to do offensively and defensively. But the main thing is take it one day at a time, not look too far. Yeah. And so you had the Stetson game last night. I actually work for Stetson University as well sometimes. So it was nice to see them. They look like they had some pop. I mean, they had a couple guys that were hitting some good threes. I mean, the number five kid, I don't know how to say his last name. I don't want to butcher it, but he was doing really well. And like, so last night, Urban Klavjar is six for 12 from three. I mean, is that something that's been really stressed this off season? Cause I know the three last year was kind of, it was hit or miss. It just depended on the week. I mean, is that something that we've really been stressing? Cause I know I know you work with the guards quite a bit. Yeah, we worked on that all spring and summer. We definitely, you know, started off slow shooting the basketball last year. And we definitely want to get to a better start this year shooting the basketball. I think Urban Klavjar is one of the best shooters in the country. So we're very fortunate to have him on our squad. And it was good to see Denzel make some threes as well. Both of them struggled from the three-point line against Baylor. And to see them bounce back and to make shots was really good. And so then I also wanted to look at some of the other guys on the team, you know, the guys that maybe aren't necessarily household names, like, you know, Denzel Urban, like those, those guys have been around for a couple of years, look it in. I mean, it's an extremely deep team. I was looking at this in, in April, you know, May, when we, when we got, you know, Buta Yevas from Europe and then Petrovic at the kind of, at the buzzer there, who are some guys that you look at that could really take a leap this year that not a lot of people might be talking about? Well, I think both Isaiah and A.J. Brown, the Brown brothers, are really important. You know, You know, Isaiah brings athleticism to our squad, and, you know, he was really good for us, especially down the stretch in SEC play last year, shot over 40% from three in SEC play last year. And A.J. Brown, transfer from... That set out last year is really important to us. He's vocal. He's a really good shooter. Another really good shooter can make open shots. He's a good player. And then we got some really, you know, young, talented freshman bigs. You mentioned Artie and also Jones-Lay is an athletic big that, you know, is going to be in the future going to be really good for us skaters. Yeah, and I think, you know, looking at I mean, it's going to be obviously a little bit of a learning curve coming from, you know, I think he was in the Spanish league, I want to say, and then coming over here. But A.J. Brown was the guy that I was banging the table about last year where I knew he was sitting out for the year, but I was like, guys, this guy, because I watched him when he played at Ohio, and he's a bucket getter. That's just what he is. He's not, he doesn't always necessarily need to be at the three-point line. He's not like a spot-up shooter, like a Momchilovich type guy. And I'm really, really intrigued to see how he kind of fits in. I think he can give us, you know, scoring at all three levels because he can get to the hoop and everything. Very excited about that. And that kind of leads me into a question that the guy who ended up setting this up for me, Kenny, one of our camera operators, he asked me, he wanted me to ask, you know, what is something that you guys look for specifically when you're looking at like a high school? level talent because I mean in this new transfer portal era they there has to be something truly special so he wanted to know what you guys look for when you are signing like a C.J. Ingram or an Alex Lloyd fresh out of high school. Yeah those great examples I mean C.J. Ingram really talented we got to get him back healthy we need this team needs C.J. Ingram and we need the shooting of Alex Lloyd. Alex Lloyd's another guy that can help raise that three-point percentage up from last But we're looking for guys that obviously. That we think are SEC athletes that are aggressive, that can help us win. Got to have good positional size or good positional athleticism. And also, we want guys that are great young men. We recruit high character guys. That's really important to us because we know if they have high character, we can develop the rest. Yeah, and I think that, and you can see it kind of bleeding through with the consistency between the last two years. I mean, it's so hard to come back consistently after you win a national title. Almost everyone, there seems to be a bit of a dip. And last year, I mean, we started out with an extremely hard non-conference schedule, you know, going out to Vegas to play Arizona, playing UConn up in Madison Square Garden. But those are huge moments, and it seemed like we kind of answered the bell, even though those games didn't necessarily break our way. I think they were still good for us going into SEC play. And then looking at this year, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought for a second. Looking at this year, I think one of the biggest things Is the practices. That was something that I was talking about with how deep this team is. You know, I mean, there's 15 guys that anyone in the country would be spoiled for choice. So what do those practices look like? I mean, the physicality has to just be insane from an outside looking in. Yeah. And up under Coach Golden, we practice. We don't practice extremely long, but we are intense with our practices. Yeah. We practice really hard. Thank you,非常的. Thank you. We're really physical. I appreciate it. We play a lot in our practices, so we compete a lot. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. We think competing is extremely important. Thank you so much. Thanks. That's important. Bye-bye. Obviously, you have to go over your offense and your coverages, Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everyone. I appreciate you. but we compete a lot in practice. Thank you so much. Thank you. So the guys are looking forward to starting this year Bye-bye. You're welcome. Thank you. and playing against other guys. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Yeah. And that iron sharpens iron, I think, because if you have, Bye-bye. Thank you. you know, the guy that's maybe the 11th or 12th guy in the rotation, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. he's going to be given it every single thing he has every single day Have a great day. Thanks. to just try to get a minute to get that bite of the apple and be able All right. to, you know, take that opportunity with both hands. So I think that's, I think that's something that'll really bode well for us, just how deep the team is, because I mean, looking before the season, I was just like, I don't know who's going to play off the bench. Like, I mean, I know probably the starting five, but beyond that, it's, it's, you know, anybody's choice and it could change, you know, how the season goes. But that is Impressed with, I mean, and I wanted to, uh, you know, just thank you for your time. You know, I, you know, they said you would, something you only had about 15 minutes, but I really appreciate you coach McCray. Uh, we're really excited for that Miami game next week. We appreciate you being on high top sports and, that I'm uh, we would love to see you, you know, sometime I'll come to Gainesville, very catch a game and love to meet you in person. I love to do that. To do that. impressed Let's make that happen. Alrighty, coach McCray. Well, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you and go Gators. All right, go Gators. with.