Transfer guards Xavian Lee & Boogie Fland have ‘really impressed’ Todd Golden

How often does Florida Gators basketball coach Todd Golden think about going back-to-back after winning the national title in April?

“Little bit,” Golden said on this week’s edition of Inside College Basketball Now with John Rothstein. “And it’s generally because of people bringing that up to me. I tell our staff all the time, this is a little bit of a new team. We get a lot of great returners coming back. Especially our front court, I think, has a chance to be one of, if not the best front court in America.

But bringing in Boogie [Fland], bringing in Xavian Lee, bringing in AJ [Brown]. We have some good freshmen coming in. We want this to be a new experience for these guys, [yet] we’re going to lean on Tommy [Haugh,], Condo [Alex Condon], Rueben [Chinyelu,], and Micah [Handlogten], and those experiences we had last year for them to kind of lead us into this new opportunity. But this is going to be a new challenge for this group this year.”

Fland, Lee and Brown are incoming transfers who have the task of replacing four departed guards from last season’s national championship squad: All-American point guard Walter Clayton, starters Alijah Martin and Will Richard, and backup Denzel Aberdeen.

Fland a rising sophomore listed at 6-foot-2 and 175 pounds, was On3’s No. 1 point guard in the class of 2024 out of Archbishop Stepinac in New York. At Arkansas last season, he averaged 13.5 points, 5.1 assists, and 3.2 rebounds in 21 games (18 starts). He shot 37.9 percent from the field and 34.0 percent from three, with just 1.4 turnovers per game—strong numbers for a freshman primary ball-handler.

Lee, a rising senior from Princeton, brings poise and polish. He averaged 16.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 5.5 assists, shooting 43.9 percent from the floor and 36.6 percent from three. His assist-to-turnover ratio stood at an impressive 2.5:1, and he knocked down 78.9 percent of his free throws.

“I’ve been really really impressed and really happy with both these guys [Fland and Lee],” Golden told Rothstein. “They come from different situations. Obviously Boogie played a big role on Arkansas’s team last year as a freshman an d took some lumps, but I felt like played some really good basketball. And now going into his sophomore year will be able to get his best foot forward after having experienced some of those ups and downs. He had a great camp for us this summer.

And Xavian Lee has kind of been a little better than I expected to be honest. He’s an offensive juggernaut. He’s really talented on that end of the floor and has great ball skills, can really dribble, pass and shoot it. I think those two guards with those three guys playing the three, four, and five—we’re going to have a pretty formidable starting lineup.”

Then there’s Brown. The 6-foot-4, 210-pound redshirt junior averaged 13.2 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.1 assists over 29 starts. He shot a career-best 47.1 percent from the field, 38.8 percent from deep, and 82.0 percent from the free-throw line. Golden is high on him, too.

Fland underwent sports hernia surgery on July 3rd. Golden thinks he’ll be back to 100% soon.

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely,” Golden told Rothstein. “We kind of took advantage of the timing and he had this at the beginning of July. I think he’ll be ready to go for the start of the school year. And, again, we kind of timed it that way to make sure he had the full fall going into camp to be ready to go.”

Asked by Rothstein to highlight a player who might be ready to make a big jump this upcoming season, Golden mentioned guard Urban Klavzar, who averaged 3.2 points a game last season.

“We need Urby Klavzar to have a good year and I think he will,” Golden said. “I think from an outside the box type opportunity, I think Urby Klavzar is a guy that’s going to step up and have a great season for us. He had some really good moments for us in league play when Alijah went down with an injury and when Walter Clayton went down with an injury. So I expect him to have a really good year for us.”