This Thanksgiving has everyone shocked, and not for good reasons! The No. 10 Florida Gators recorded their second loss of the 2025-26 NCAA season in a game that was expected to be one-sided against the TCU Horned Frogs. And head coach Todd Golden didn’t hold back as he broke down exactly what went wrong.

“I thought we did a horrendous job taking care of the basketball. Played well enough at points to get ourselves a 10-point lead with 15 minutes to go, even without playing that well, to be honest.” Golden said about his team’s turnover issues in a post-game interview. “ But we were valuing the ball and making good decisions. The last 15 minutes of the game, we did a terrible job that way, and I thought our defense was really poor in the second half, giving up 57 percent from the field.”

For nearly 25 minutes, Florida looked like the superior team. They shot 50% in the first half, controlled the tempo, and went into halftime up 44–39. Early in the second half, Urban Klavzar and Thomas Haugh continued to pace the offense, helping the Gators build a 53–43 lead. But then everything started slipping away.

Florida unraveled with 19 turnovers, many of them completely avoidable. But possession after possession slipped away, fueling TCU’s momentum as the Horned Frogs attacked the paint relentlessly. And Florida’s interior defense had no answers for their attacks. TCU shot a staggering 75% inside the arc and dominated the paint battle 44–34.

On top of that, foul trouble hit the Gators hard. With Boogie Fland and Xaivian Lee fouled out, Haugh and Alex Cinyelu, with four fouls each, forced Golden into rotations that couldn’t match TCU’s physicality. Ultimately, the Gators finished with 26 fouls.

Furthermore, Florida went 8-of-29 from deep, many of them uncontested, continuing a season-long trend that Todd Golden has called out himself. In their season opener loss against the Arizona Wildcats, they shot only 26% from behind the arc, going 7-of-27.

With top-tier matchups still ahead, the Florida Gators can’t afford another outing where it beats itself more than its opponent.

What’s next for the Todd Golden-led Gators?

The Gators sit at a 4–2 record for now, early in the season. But they are about to enter a stretch where their shortcomings can’t be ignored anymore. Turnovers, defensive lapses inside, and inconsistent shooting have become patterns for the team, not one-off bad nights. While Urban Klavzar and Thomas Haugh continue to be bright spots, Florida needs collective toughness and discipline to stabilize the season.

“We’ve got to do a better job taking care of the basketball… We’ve got to understand that for us to be our best, we’ve got to be a gritty, hard-nosed, tough team that doesn’t allow a team to shoot 57 percent on us in a half. It’s got to be who we are,” Todd Golden said in the interview, sending a clear message to his team.

For their upcoming game, they will play:

• The Providence Friars on November 28th.
• The Duke Blue Devils on December 2nd.
• The UConn Huskies on December 9th.

The question now is simple: can Todd Golden’s squad tighten up and bounce back, or are more wake-up calls coming?