After capturing the Southeastern Conference regular-season title, the Gators secured a No. 1 seed for the second straight year.<\/p>\n
GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Florida men\u2019s basketball team is headed back to the NCAA Tournament as a top seed. After capturing the Southeastern Conference regular-season title, the Gators secured a No. 1 seed for the second straight year and will open tournament play Friday in Tampa.<\/p>\n
Florida will face the winner of the First Four matchup between Prairie View A&M and Lehigh at Benchmark International Arena. Game time and television information will be announced later.<\/p>\n
The Gators are making their 24th appearance in the NCAA Tournament and their third consecutive trip under fourth-year head coach Todd Golden. During Golden\u2019s tenure, Florida has posted a 6-1 record in the tournament, highlighted by last season\u2019s national championship run.<\/p>\n
With a 26-7 record this season, Florida earned the fourth No. 1 seed in program history. It marks the first time the program has received a top seed in back-to-back tournaments. The Gators\u2019 previous No. 1 seeds came in 2007, 2014 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Florida has historically thrived when entering the tournament as a No. 1 seed. The Gators captured national championships in 2007 and 2025 and reached the Final Four in 2014.<\/p>\n
In terms of potential opponents, Florida has never faced Lehigh in program history. The Gators\u2019 only meeting with Prairie View A&M came in 2006, a game Florida won.<\/p>\n
The winner of Florida\u2019s opening-round game will advance to face the winner of the Clemson vs. Iowa matchup on Sunday in Tampa.<\/p>\n
With momentum from an SEC title and championship experience from last season, Florida enters the tournament looking to make another deep March run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After capturing the Southeastern Conference regular-season title, the Gators secured a No. 1 seed for the second straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-192863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192863","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=192863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}