{"id":197794,"date":"2026-03-19T14:01:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197794\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T14:01:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:01:18","slug":"vegas-odds-leaves-little-doubt-about-prairie-views-cinderella-fate-vs-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197794\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegas odds leaves little doubt about Prairie View\u2019s Cinderella fate vs Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5l\">Florida <a href=\"https:\/\/hailfloridahail.com\/florida-march-madness-base-seed-potential-opponents-schedules-and-final-four-path\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">now knows<\/a> who it will play in Round One of the NCAA Tournament after Prairie View A&amp;M knocked off Lehigh in the First Four to move on to a date with the defending national champions. Only twice in NCAA Tournament history has a No. 16 seed knocked off a No. 1 seed and it would a shock for this game to be close at all, let alone for an actual upset to happen.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5o\">And it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/hailfloridahail.com\/florida-gators-basketball\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">not just <\/a>we here at Hail Florida Hail who expect Prairie View\u2019s Cinderella run to come to a screeching halt; initial odds from Vegas envision a game that could be over by the first commercial.<\/p>\n<p>Florida is a massive favorite over Prairie View A&amp;M\u00a0<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5u\">Prairie View A&amp;M will have a solid story to tell no matter what happens on Friday. The Panthers won just five games last season before putting together a respectable 9-9 campaign in the SWAC this season. But they were still the No. 8 seed in the SWAC Tournament before they pieced together four wins over five days that culminated with a 72-66 win over Southern in the SWAC title game.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5x\">They also fell behind against Lehigh in the First Four before staging a comeback to win 67-55.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"60\">It\u2019s a fun Cinderella story, but Vegas doesn\u2019t care for a Cinderella story.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"63\">Initial odds have Florida favored by 53.5 points, the single-highest spread of any game in the tournament and the largest spread in over 25 years.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"66\">There are a ton of factors that have this spread as inflated as it is. Prairie View doesn\u2019t shoot the ball well (289th in shooting percentage), they foul a ton (326th in fouls per game), and they don\u2019t really move the ball around at all on offense (346th in assists to field goals made).<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"69\">And while the Panthers do tend to try and swarm on defense and do force a lot of turnovers, the single biggest area that is prone to let this game get out of hand is that Prairie View A&amp;M is 345th in the country in defensive rebounding percentage.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6c\">Rueben Chinyelu might have 20 rebounds by halftime.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6f\">If Florida really wanted to <a href=\"https:\/\/hailfloridahail.com\/everything-lapsed-fans-need-to-know-about-florida-ahead-of-march-madness\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">put the hammer down<\/a>, they could win this game by 40, but we have a feeling Todd Golden will pull back in the final four minutes, which could let the Panthers cover the spread.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-11\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6i\">Either way, any win less than 20 points is going to raise some major alarm bells moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida now knows who it will play in Round One of the NCAA Tournament after Prairie View A&amp;M&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-197794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197794","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=197794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}