One of the great stories of the 2023-24 Florida Gators basketball season was the emergence of freshman Thomas Haugh. With the extra year of eligibility due to COVID and high major teams loading up with veteran players to be as old as possible, the impact of freshmen has been less than ever in recent years. While Haugh was getting a lot of positive reports out of training camp, expectations were still measured due to the fact he was a first year player, but quickly Haugh established himself as a rotation level SEC player.
Haugh is a player who had solid offers out of high school but many who evaluated him wouldn’t have expected him to be someone who could go to a school like Florida and compete right away. After a solid high school career he decided to take a post grad season at Perkiomen in Pennsylvania, a decision that ultimately paid off in a huge way. After securing the commitment to Florida he was able to work on his game, and the fact that he was a year older than most freshmen due to the post grad year meant he was also positioned to be college ready. In his first ever collegiate game against Loyola MD he played 16 minutes and had 6 points and 3 rebounds, not looking out of place as an energy forward off Florida’s bench.
Looking towards the 2024-25 season, Haugh is an important part of Florida’s plans. Last year nearly all of his minutes were at the backup power forward spot, but Florida’s staff has some plans of him playing the “3” in order to match up with some of the larger wings of the SEC. The last two years the Gators have been undersized at the wings which has been an issue, particularly defensively, and if Haugh is able to play some minutes at small forward the team instantly gets extremely long. Imagining a lineup of Reuben Chinyelu, Alex Condon, and Thomas Haugh means the Gators would have enough length to nearly go fingertip to fingertip from one side of the three-point line to the other, and suddenly it looks like the defense could be a lot more difficult to score on than it was a year ago…