{"id":258162,"date":"2026-05-04T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/258162\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T19:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T19:50:08","slug":"florida-basketball-signs-domen-petrovic-gators-add-second-european-talent-this-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/258162\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida basketball signs Domen Petrovi\u0107: Gators add second European talent this offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"image-credits\">Image Credit: <a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">UAA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden is in the process of closing out his roster for the 2026-27 season, with another European addition announced on Monday. Slovenian power forward Domen Petrovi\u0107, 22, has decided to continue his career playing at Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Petrovi\u0107 (6-foot-9) averaged 16.6 points on 39.5% shooting from 3-point range, along with 6.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists this season as a professional in Slovenia. He is a former FIBA U20 teammate of Gators junior guard Urban Klav\u017ear, the SEC Sixth Man of the Year last season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are really excited to welcome Domen into our program,\u201d Golden said in a statement. \u201cHe is a very skilled forward that has great positional size. He has shown incremental improvement every year, and he\u2019s currently playing the best basketball of his young career. He is a high-achiever both on and off the court and will help us continue to raise the bar here at Florida!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last Monday, center Art\u016bras Butajevas of Lithuania <a href=\"https:\/\/www.onlygators.com\/04\/27\/2026\/florida-basketball-retains-cj-ingram-adds-arturas-butajevas-as-commitment-out-of-lithuania\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">committed to join Florida<\/a>. Butajevas (6-foot-10, 215 pounds) averaged 15.6 points and 7.6 rebounds playing the 2025-26 season with the U22 team Unicaja Malaga in Spain. <\/p>\n<p>Petrovi\u0107 will likely be Florida\u2019s final addition ahead of the season, as the program is also bringing in transfer G Denzel Aberdeen (should he receive NCAA clearance for an additional year of eligibility) and freshman center Jones Lay (Hickory, North Carolina), a 7-foot, 230-pounder who is the lone high school player joining the team.<\/p>\n<p>The Gators continue to wait for a final decision from junior center Rueben Chinyelu, the lone player to test the 2026 NBA Draft waters. Guard Xaivian Lee saw his eligibility expire, while redshirt freshman C Olivier Rioux, the tallest teenager in the world, transferred to UC Irvine.<\/p>\n<p>Florida is returning starting forwards junior Thomas Haugh and Alex Condon and starting sophomore G Boogie Fland, along with all of its other reserves, including sophomore G Isaiah Brown and freshman G CJ Ingram. As such, assuming Aberdeen is cleared, the Gators are expected to be the preseason No. 1 team in the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image Credit: UAA Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden is in the process of closing out his roster&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111920,111921,28,30,29,111922,62,3116],"class_list":["post-258162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-arturas-butajevas","tag-domen-petrovic","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-jones-lay","tag-sec","tag-todd-golden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}