New Oxford native Haugh to compete in NCAA Tournament with Florida

Four years ago, Thomas Haugh made the difficult decision to leave New Oxford for a prep school. He also left volleyball and football behind to focus on basketball.

Those choices helped bring him to the Big Dance.

Haugh is now a freshman at Florida, which received a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Division I Tournament on Sunday evening. The 6-foot-9 forward has quickly developed into a key reserve for the Gators, who played in the SEC championship game Sunday afternoon.

Florida became Haugh’s “dream school” as a kid because he was drawn to Tim Tebow and the Gators’ football team. But his own big-time college athletic aspirations didn’t take off until high school. After a growth spurt from 5-6 in sixth grade to 6-7 as a sophomore, Haugh helped lead New Oxford to the 2020 PIAA Class 5A quarterfinals before COVID-19 canceled the season. He began to receive D-I college offers shortly thereafter.

Once it became clear that basketball would be Haugh’s ticket to college sports, he left his Adams County hometown for Pennsbury-based Perkiomen, which plays a national hoops schedule. After backing up multiple D-I prospects in his first year at the prep school, he became a key piece for the Vikings as a senior. Rather than join a college program after graduation, though, Haugh opted to take advantage of Perkiomen’s graduate year. Florida got involved in the summer of 2022, and a visit to Gainesville sold Haugh on the program.

The versatile forward will look to lean on the championship experience he gained in 2023, when he helped lead Perkiomen to the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) title as an all-state selection averaging 24 points and 10 rebounds per game. The postgraduate year also allowed Haugh to continue developing his body; he’s now 210 pounds after weighing just 185 at New Oxford.

Florida, in its second season under head coach Todd Golden, is 24-11 and will open the NCAA Tournament at 4:30 p.m. Friday against either Boise State or Colorado. Haugh has played in all 35 games, averaging 3.9 points and 3.7 rebounds in 14.5 minutes per contest. He logged 25 minutes and scored 11 points — his third double-digit output of the season — in Sunday’s 86-67 loss to Auburn, and he’ll likely need to step up after 7-1 center Micah Handlogten broke his leg during the SEC final.

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Haugh is one of three former York-Adams League boys’ players competing in Division I hoops this season. Quadir Copeland, who played at Gettysburg before going the prep and postgraduate route, averaged 9.6 points and 4.6 rebounds as a sophomore at Syracuse. And Red Lion graduate Davante Dennis played for Incarnate Word, notching 3.8 points and 3.6 rebounds as a sophomore.

York County native Jarace Walker reached the Sweet 16 with a top-seeded Houston team in 2023 before being selected No. 8 overall in that year’s NBA draft. For Haugh, this tournament is a chance to set the tone for a bright future at Florida.

CLOSING TIME

The NCAA Division II basketball tournaments began over the weekend, but no local athletes remain after the first two rounds.

Lock Haven’s women, making their first NCAA appearance since 1991, reached the second round with Friday’s 74-60 win over PSAC foe IUP before falling 91-72 on Saturday to PSAC champion Gannon. Conference Freshman of the Year Rhlyn Rouse (York Tech) came off the bench to score 10 points Friday and six on Saturday. York native Jenadia Jordan, meanwhile, notched 25 and 27 points in the two contests while sinking a combined 25 of 31 free-throw attempts. Delone Catholic graduate Abby Jacoby appeared in both games, averaging 10 minutes, while fellow Squirette Brooke Lawyer made a three-minute appearance for the Bald Eagles (29-4) on Saturday.

West York graduate Alianna Hopta did not play in West Chester’s 72-68 first-round loss to Fairmont State on Friday. Central York’s Teirra Preston, meanwhile, missed the last month and a half of the season for IUP, which was eliminated with a 72-63 loss to Fayetteville State on Friday. Preston, a graduate student, averaged 10.3 points and 8.1 rebounds in 19 games for the Crimson Hawks, who finished 21-8. The sophomore Hopta scored five points across 14 appearances for the Golden Rams (24-7).

No former York-Adams League boys’ players competed in this year’s D-II tournament. A handful of local products reached the D-III men’s and women’s brackets, all of whom went out in the first weekend.

SPARTAN STANDOUTS

The York College basketball season met its end in mid-February, but multiple Spartans are still earning postseason honors. Junior Kai Cipalla was named to the Region V first team by d3hoops.com last week, and the publication also named Spartan women’s sophomore Breana Grim (Eastern York) as the Region V Rookie of the Year.

The Spartan baseball team is 9-1 with eight consecutive wins after sweeping Albright in its first MAC Commonwealth series over the weekend. They followed Friday’s 9-5 road win with 20-1 and 4-3 home victories on Saturday. Chris Betler had a sensational Saturday, going 3 for 3 with a homer in each game and tallying seven RBIs in the doubleheader to earn MAC Commonwealth Player of the Week honors. He’s now hitting .579 with five homers and 22 RBIs this season.

York College softball also swept Albright over the weekend, including a dominant doubleheader on Sunday. Graduate catcher Daphney Adams drove home a pair of runs Sunday to become just the fifth Spartan to surpass 100 RBIs in her career. Junior Emma Wade, meanwhile, repeated as MACC Player of the Week after going 5 for 11 with two homers and 10 RBIs in a 3-1 week for York.

Madison Kurland (Central York) and Sophie Steel each recorded three goals and two assists as the Spartan women’s lacrosse team rolled past Washington (Md.), 16-11, at home Saturday.

The men’s lacrosse squad continued its hard-luck start to the season with a pair of losses to top-10 teams — 9-8 on Friday against No. 10 St. Lawrence, 11-8 on Saturday against No. 4 Dickinson — at the Mustang Classic in Owings Mills, Maryland. Sophomore midfielder Coleton Mahorney (Dallastown) had four goals over the weekend, including three on Saturday.

Jason Lutz was the lone bright spot for Spartan tennis on Saturday, winning a three-set singles match after pairing with Ben Dorsey to claim a doubles win against Lebanon Valley. York College lost the men’s match 7-2 and the women’s match 9-0.

LION’S DEN

The Penn State York men’s basketball team reached the USCAA Division II national semifinals last week before bowing out against Penn State Wilkes-Barre in last Tuesday’s semifinals. Wilkes-Barre went on to beat Cincinnati Clermont for the title on Wednesday.

The local Nittany Lions finished 28-7 and put the exclamation point on their season with a PSUAC tournament title on March 2 in State College. PSY is slated to return most of its production in 2024-25, but last week was the end of the road for New Oxford grad Deriq Brown, the PSUAC’s all-time leading scorer.

Penn State baseball improved to 6-3 this season with a pair of victories over Central Maine CC on Friday. The Nittany Lions won 3-0 and 7-6 at Shryock Field, but their home games for the rest of the season will be played downtown at WellSpan Park. That will include PSY’s conference-opening doubleheader against Penn State Scranton starting at 2 p.m. Friday. Before then, the Lions will visit Bucks County CC for a twin bill on Tuesday afternoon.