With four former Florida Gators basketball players set to try and begin their professional careers this offseason, OnlyGators.com is pleased to announced that forward/center Patric Young has agreed to join the website and chronicle his personal process from now through the 2014 NBA Draft on Thursday, June 26.

Young will check in regularly to give readers his own unique insight on what goes into choosing an agent, attending pre-draft workouts, visiting with teams and hopefully being selected at some point during the two-round draft in nine weeks.

The 11th player in school history to end his career with more than 1,300 points and 800 rebounds, Young averaged a career-high 11.0 points per game as a senior and also contributed 6.2 boards per contest. He is second all-time at Florida in games played (149), fifth in blocks (159) and dunks (142), eighth in minutes played (1,644), and ninth in field goal percentage (.577) and games started (107).

Rewarded for three years of outstanding defense and an especially dominant 2013-14 campaign, Young received SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors this season. He was also named SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year for the third-straight season with a 3.38 grade-point average in Telecommunications, becoming the first player in league history to accomplish that feat.

Young was a finalist for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award, given annually to a senior with “notable achievements in four areas of excellence – classroom, community, character and competition.” Though he did not win the honor outright, he was named to the four-player First Team.



RELATED – Strength in years: Burden-carrying senior center Patric Young became rock Florida Gators needed

The fifth Florida student-athlete to participate as the featured player in OnlyGators.com’s Path to the Draft series – following Chandler Parsons, Josh Evans, Erik Murphy and Jaylen Watkins – Young is also the ninth former Gators star to guest blog for the website since it was created in 2009.

Parsons (Houston Rockets), Evans (Jacksonville Jaguars) and Murphy (Utah Jazz) are all on professional teams. Watkins still involved in the process as he is more than two weeks away from the 2014 NFL Draft.

Offensive lineman Shannon Snell is currently on staff as a football columnist. Quarterback Danny Wuerffel, the website’s first guest columnist in 2010, forward Adam Allen (basketball) and catcher Teddy Foster (baseball) have also contributed in the past.

You can also follow Patric Young on Twitter by clicking here.