ORLANDO, Fla. — By all accounts, the Florida Gators shouldn’t have been here — at least not yet.

Not in the confetti-strewn spotlight of college basketball’s grandest stage. Not hoisting a national championship trophy with a roster cobbled together through the chaos of the transfer portal. Not with a 39-year-old coach who, just a few seasons ago, was an analytics nerd leading a mid-major in San Francisco.

But here they are.

Here he is.

Todd Golden, the metrics-motivated architect of Florida’s improbable rise, stood beneath the roaring rafters of the Alamodome Monday night, a “national champions” ballcap turned backwards like a 14-year-old’s, arms raised skyward, a hint of disbelief softening his trademark focus. The Gators had just stunned top-seeded Houston 65-63, coming back from a 12-point deficit in the second half, claiming their third national title — and their first since 2007.

Golden, the youngest coach to win a natty since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, looks like he should be skateboarding to class with a backpack-full of books; not coaching a college basketball program to a national freaking championship.

I just didn’t have the heart to ask iconic Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, who is about to turn 70 with 20 NCAA Tournament appearances under his belt but still in search of his first national championship, “So, does getting outcoached by a teenager make this loss even tougher to take?”

Of course, I could have asked the same snarky question to Dan Hurley, the coach of two-time defending national champion UConn Huskies, whom the Gators dispensed of in the second round. Or Bruce Pearl, the coach of the No. 1 overall seed Auburn Tigers, whom the Gators dispensed of in the Final Four semifinal.

Todd Golden, the whiz-kid wunderkind of college basketball, outcoached ’em all.

Golden, it seems, didn’t just win a championship Monday night.

He may have changed the game.

He may have become a symbol of what’s possible when you let go of tradition and embrace transformation.

College basketball is no longer what it was even five years ago. Name, image and likeness rights have turned locker rooms into miniature marketplaces. The transfer portal has become a revolving door of hope and heartbreak. And the old guard who once stood as bastions of the sport — Roy Williams, Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, Jim Larrañaga, Leonard Hamilton — have steadily walked away, weary of the chaos or unwilling to adapt.

But Golden?

He ran toward the fire.

He was never supposed to be a coaching prodigy. Hell, he wasn’t even planning to be a coach and briefly sold advertising for a living once he stopped playing basketball shortly after college. He has no blue-blood pedigree. No decades apprenticing under Hall of Famers. Golden was a role player at Saint Mary’s, a grinder who soaked up everything he could under coach Randy Bennett. There, he fell in love not with plays, but with data. Hustle stats. Shot quality. Win probability.

He worked to improve his numbers in all of the key “winning” statistical categories and quickly became a starter, helping Saint Mary’s to two NCAA Tournament bids before graduating. It reached a point where he could calculate not only his own plus-minus numbers in his head but the plus-minus numbers of his teammates as well. As a senior, he ranked second in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio.

“Todd has a next-level way of thinking,” UF athletic director Scott Stricklin recalls when asked what impressed him about Golden during the hiring process. “A lot of people talk about analytics, but he actually had a plan and examples of how analytics had helped him build his teams.”

While old-school coaches trust their gut, Golden trusts his spreadsheets.

And they worked.

At the University of San Francisco, he turned a forgotten program into a 24-win team and NCAA Tournament qualifier. The Gators took a chance on him in 2022. Stricklin handed the keys to a numbers guy in his mid-30s, betting that the future needed a different kind of coach.

Three years later, that bet has paid off tenfold.

What makes Golden so uniquely dangerous in this new era is that he doesn’t just tolerate change, he thrives in it.

While traditionalists lament the transfer portal’s impact on team chemistry, Golden uses it like a Wall Street savant who becomes a billionaire by loading up on value stocks. He assembles teams with mathematical precision, plugging statistical holes with high-efficiency, low-ego players. Not a single player on this year’s UF roster was a top 100 recruit coming out of high school.

This year’s title team is a masterclass in modern roster building. Golden landed Iona’s Walter Clayton Jr., Florida Atlantic’s Alijah Martin, Belmont’s Will Richard, Washington State’s Rueben Chinyelu and Marshall’s Micah Handlogten. Four of his five starters in the championship game were transfers brought together not because of pedigree, but because of production.

Golden is, in many ways, a metrics messiah whose passion for numbers started as a young boy when he memorized every license plate in his neighborhood. These days, he’s memorizing pace-adjusted offensive efficiency, player fatigue scores, shot value heatmaps and other advanced analytical categories.

And while some data-obsessed coaches lose the locker room, Golden wins it. He teaches the why behind the numbers. He empowers players to understand how their individual effort shapes team outcomes. He doesn’t recite analytics; he translates them.

The fact that he’s won a national title so quickly has reshuffled the hierarchy of college basketball. He’s building more than a team in Gainesville. He’s building a philosophy; a system; an innovative way of doing things in which heart, hustle and heuristic indicators can co-exist.

What does it say that in the most turbulent era in college basketball history, it’s the most calculated, composed, mathematical and methodical figure who now stands atop the sport?

It says the future belongs to those who adapt.

It says the common clipboard is being replaced by the data dashboard.

And it says that maybe, just maybe, these Golden Gators have only just begun.

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