After weeks of speculation following the Florida Gators’ earlier-than-expected ousting from the NCAA Tournament, the Rowdy Reptiles got some much-needed good news.
Potential lottery pick, Thomas Haugh, will be withdrawing his name from the NBA Draft and returning for his senior season.
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This comes less than a week after forward Alex Condon, another potential first-round pick, announced he would be returning to play for the Gators.
This means Florida will almost certainly enter the 2026-27 season as the preseason number one team in the country when October rolls around.
The Gators return four of five starters from a team that won the SEC and was a number one seed entering last year’s tournament.
What makes Haugh’s return even more interesting, however, is the potentially murky future of Gators’ head coach Todd Golden.
Golden was rumored to be the top choice of the Golden State Warriors should they move on from Steve Kerr this offseason.
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It makes sense, given that Golden has West Coast roots and even coached in the Bay Area at the University of San Francisco for three season before becoming the head coach at Florida in 2022.
Haugh coming back to Gainesville just 24 hours after the Warriors made it known Golden was on their radar can’t be an accident, and the 40-year-old Gators head coach seemed pretty thrilled to have his star player back in the fold for next season, posting an Instagram story of Haugh’s announcement with the caption “job’s not finished.”
Gator fans seemed to be on edge with the news that their national championship-winning head coach was being pursued by an NBA franchise, and got some added conspiracy theory fodder when former Florida coach Billy Donovan abruptly resigned from the Chicago Bulls.
The prevailing thought (at least among the conspiratorial wing of the Florida fanbase) was that Donovan did so to make himself available for the job should Golden make his way out west.
It doesn’t appear that’s the case, and Gator fans can rest easy knowing their coach and best player will both be back in Orange and Blue next season.
