.avif){kind=logo}
The Florida Gators basketball practice complex is made up of a maze of hallways, treatment rooms, trophy displays and pieces of past Final Four courts. The state-of-the-art facility is built to mirror the output of the No. 1 team in the preseason rankings, frequented by veteran players who helped bring the 2024 national championship to Gainesville. But as Alex Condon, Boogie Fland, Thomas Haugh and Rueben Chinyelu make themselves comfortable in the plush blue leather seats within the team’s film room, the program’s recent highs aren’t on their minds. Instead, the first thing that’s discussed is how the sting from their last game together is just as fresh as it was during the final seconds of the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
“After the Iowa loss, I was just thinking, like, I need to run it back. I knew straight away that we had unfinished business here,” Alex says.
Two years ago, Condon, Haugh and Chinyelu helped Florida capture its first national championship since 2007. And despite falling out of the Top 25 midway through last season, the Gators, alongside then-sophomore transfer Boogie Fland, clawed their way to the SEC regular season championship and earned a No. 1 seed heading into March. With three projected 2026 NBA Draft picks balling out, the stunning Round of 32 loss felt like a resurgent stampede coming to a sudden halt.
Each of the Gators' top pieces retreated into the offseason looking for space to reassess and recuperate. Tommy took a vacation in Hawaii. Boogie jetted off to Jamaica. Alex returned to his home in Perth, Australia. And Rueben headed back to Nigeria for the first time since coming to Florida in 2024.
While continents and oceans stood between them, the pull back to Gainesville was felt across the globe, just like it was two decades ago.
This isn’t the first time Gator Nation has been energized by the return of their best players. The 2026-27 team holds eerily similar characteristics to the last dominant squad that presided over Gainesville. The parallels don’t stop at a unique big-man pairing and microwave scoring on the perimeter. In the face of notoriety, millions of dollars and all that the League promises, Al Horford, Joakim Noah and Corey Brewer agreed to run it back for the ‘06-07 season even after claiming the natty. Twenty years later, a nostalgic tint has fallen across North Central Florida, as the Gators' new assemblage of stars coordinated their own return to campus for another chance at claiming glory. Together.
“I mean, from the jump, I knew I wanted to come back,” Boogie says. “I love being here, everything about it, the culture, the people. So I already knew. It was a no-brainer for me.”
It took the New York native less than a week after the late March loss to announce his return to campus. A few weeks later, the team’s near-seven-foot centerpiece joined him, while Tommy and Rueben continued to test their draft projections.
“I was hanging out with Tommy quite a bit, so I was trying to get on his shoulders and make sure he comes back as well,” Alex says about how the group stayed in touch throughout the offseason. “Rue, I had no idea. He was in Nigeria the whole time. He turned off his phone,” Alex says while the group laughs.
“I went through the draft process and everything, just weighing everything,” Rueben chimes in. “For me, the feeling of coming back to represent the Gator Nation, to play with my brothers and to chase the one goal that we were chasing all season before we came up short, the feeling of being able to go do that again was something that I couldn't pass up.”
From the sandy beaches of Hawaii, the Gators' premier scoring threat watched as his teammates chose to put their professional careers on hold for another year together. “Once Condo and all these boys started to come back, I knew what I wanted to do,” Tommy says.
By late May, fans in Florida went from combing through the transfer portal for replacements to witnessing the revival of one of the greatest front courts the SEC has ever seen. In total, the wealth of Florida’s return is best described by the seasons they’re coming off of. There’s the best defensive player and rebounder in all of college last season, one of the best big men in the country, last season’s leading scorer and a three-year wear-tested point guard who can go off in an instant.
At 6-10 with a 7-7 wingspan, Rueben Chinyelu's double-double averages made him a fan favorite on campus and among the program’s past greats like Joakim Noah. On the opposite block was Alex Condon, a multi-faceted tower whose unique blend of size, mobility, physicality and vision at 6-11 had him pouring in 15.1 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.4 blocks per game as a junior. Spotted up on the wing, a scintillating 6-9 scorer in Thomas Haugh, who posted 17.1 points a game before putting a projected lottery selection on hold. Linking them all together at the point, Boogie Fland, the former No. 22-ranked player in his class, now evolved into a veteran voice on one of the best teams in the nation.
A fortune of individual accolades stands at each of their fingertips. All-American honors and positional Player of the Year awards galore. But the collective focus inside the film room in late September is decidedly centered on the team’s success.
Honestly, just being a better team than we were last year,” Boogie says on his goal for the season. “I feel like early on [last year], they criticized us for things we weren't doing well. But as it started going, we moved up in the rankings after being unranked and took that No. 1 spot back.”
Alex, who helped capture that 2024 chip as a sophomore, knows those individual accolades will come as they stack things up in the win column. He watched it happen in the months that followed their celebration in Glendale. “All those guys who weren't on draft boards at the start of the year just got picked up in the NBA Draft. Winning is the number one thing for us. Obviously, those accolades are just a bonus and extra recognition,” he says.
“I think that's all of our guys' focus this year,” Tommy adds. “We're not looking at what can one player get, it’s what can the team get as a whole.”
After returning to campus from their offseason excursions, it’s been a collective effort to ensure that No. 1 ranking doesn’t wane all the way through next April. “You don’t want to see summer practices, bro,” Rueben says.
“You’re going to think it’s gladiator fights,” Tommy adds.
“It’s war out there. It’s like we play for championships,” Rueben continues.
Because they are. Every day is an opportunity to prepare. Toward the end of the summer, Tommy and Alex took the summer’s grueling training sessions on the road, coordinating a group trip to California to run sand dunes, sharpen their iron in 1s and deepen their years-long connections off the court. The shared pain from the end of last season fueled it all.
“That's why I'm here,” Rueben says. “That's why we all came together to chase one goal, which is to get a national championship.”
SHOP SLAM GOODS