American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote that it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Riley Kugel ’s basketball journey has been a winding road that has taken him from the local courts at Dr. Phillips to a 4-star recruit at Florida and Mississippi State, before finally returning home to Central Florida at UCF .

It wasn’t precisely where the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Kugel thought his career would be at this point.

“When I entered college, my goal was to do two years and then I’m gone, but things changed,” Kugel recently told the Orlando Sentinel. “Everything happens for a reason. It allowed me to be in a position where it could help make me a leader.”

Kugel signed as part of Todd Golden’s first recruiting class at Florida after a successful career at Dr. Phillips, where

See Full Page