GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Florida’s preseason push took a different shape this summer, and the Gators hope the payoff shows up long after the California sunshine is gone.
What started with a pair of upperclassmen looking to bring the group together turned into a week-long workout retreat in Los Angeles, where eight Florida players and manager Ryan Webster spent Aug. 9 at Academy USA under trainer Olin Simphis, known as “The Guard Whisperer.” The trip gave the Gators a chance to work, sweat and live together before fall practice opened Thursday.
For Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh, the idea grew out of a desire to recreate some of the chemistry that helped define Florida’s title run two years ago and carry that standard into another season. The two helped organize the trip and pitched it to coach Todd Golden, who made clear it had to be player-driven.
“This is not a thing that would have happened five years ago,” Golden said, after the team held a mandatory players meeting Wednesday on the eve to the start of fall semester classes. “When they brought it to my attention, I thought it was awesome, but I also told them that I wasn't going to help set it up.
It wasn't going to be a player-led thing with directives coming from above. They would have to run with it as leaders of the team.
Guys were either in or out.”
The group that went west included Condon, Haugh, Boogie Fland, Denzel Aberdeen, CJ Ingram, Alex Lloyd, Alex Kovatchev, Arturas Butajvas and Webster. The other seven players on the roster were either unable to make the trip or were overseas, including Rueben Chinyelu, who returned to Nigeria this summer to see family for the first time in three years.
The setting was no ordinary gym run. Simphis’ client list includes Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Kevin Durant and Stephon Castle, and his sessions leaned hard into shot creation, decision-making, footwork, balance and discipline. The pace never let up.
“This wasn't ordinary work,” Ingram said. “This was high-level intense stuff.”
The players started early each morning at the “Dojo,” splitting into two groups so the guards could work on the floor while the bigs hit the weight room, then switching roles. Twice, the workouts moved off campus for sprints across the sand dunes at Malibu and Santa Monica, followed by swimming. The evenings, by contrast, were relaxed, with dinners at restaurants and time spent walking around places like LA Live.
There was also a trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain, where the ride on Tatsu - a coaster that stands a 170 feet and hits 62 miles per hour with riders suspended face down - stalled and left the players hanging above the park for 20 minutes before maintenance personnel resolved the issue.
“No,” Aberdeen said. “That was crazy.”
The basketball work, though, was the point. Condon said the trip brought back memories of the bond that fueled Florida’s championship team, while also building toward what the Gators want to become this season.
“It reminded me of two years ago, the way we were all getting along like a family, but working out so intensely,” Condon said. “That level of conditioning, we hope, will help us all get that second-half advantage that me and Tommy have with our conditioning. We want the whole team to buy into it to the point we can really just punish teams in the second half.”
Florida opened its preseason fall practice Thursday with a morning in the weight room and an afternoon of pickup in the gym. The team is expected to be ranked No. 1 in the nation when the first polls come out in October, and Ingram said the summer together only sharpened the group’s mindset.
“We were a close team last year, but the way the season ended I think made us even closer,” Ingram said. “It made us realize what we have to do each and every day to not have that feeling again.
So, a little adversity in us all coming together was a great thing. It's going to help.”
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