According to On3’s Pete Nakos, the Florida Gators have landed a commitment from Maddox McDougall out of the NCAA transfer portal. McDougall is a right-handed pitcher who spent the past two seasons at Jacksonville State. He will now head to Gainesville, hoping for a breakout campaign with Florida. A nice pickup for head coach Kevin O’Sullivan.

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McDougall pitched in 23 games this season for Jacksonville State, 22 of which were out of the bullpen. He finished with a 2.76 ERA, giving up just 15 earned runs over 49 innings pitched. Florida will like the number of strikeouts produced, as McDougall fanned 54 opposing batters. Maybe the walks, which sat at 18 in ’26, are an area the Gators will want to improve moving forward.

Four of McDougall’s outings were against power conference programs. Two of them — Alabama and Auburn — actually play in the SEC. In those two specific games, McDougall combined for 3.1 innings pitched, seven hits, five earned runs, one walk, and two strikeouts.

Of course, SEC opponents are going to become a whole lot more common for McDougall. Florida is there to continue the development after showing significant signs of progress at Jacksonville State. Some work will be done during the summer months and into fall ball before officially getting his UF tenure underway with the 2027 season.

On3 | Rivals’ Gators Online has a transfer portal tracker going for Florida. You can check out everything happening for O’Sullivan’s offseason moves here.

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To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

Florida loses assistant coach to NC State

The Florida baseball team is reportedly set to lose a second assistant coach off its 2026 staff. According to D1Baseball.com’s Kendall Rogers, NC State is expected to hire Taylor Black as its new recruiting coordinator.

Black spent the past four years at Florida. He had a previous stint at NC State from 2014-17, so he’s returning to some familiar stomping grounds.

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A Florida bio for Taylor Black credits him with much of Florida’s improvement in hitting after his arrival ahead of the 2023 season. The Gators also reached Omaha twice while Black was on staff.

On3’s Thomas Goldkamp contributed to this report