{"id":199597,"date":"2026-03-20T20:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/199597\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T20:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:01:08","slug":"march-madness-first-round-tips-off-in-tampa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/199597\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness first round tips off in Tampa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TAMPA, Fla. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/\">WWSB<\/a>) &#8211; The first round of March Madness for NCAA Men\u2019s College Basketball begins today in Tampa, with the first of four games tipping off at Benchmark International Arena.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Fans poured into the arena ahead of the first game, with music playing and excitement building before tipoff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Four teams from Florida made the March Madness field this year: the UCF Knights, USF Bulls, Miami Hurricanes and Florida Gators. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/2026\/03\/19\/usf-bulls-season-ends-with-first-round-ncaa-tournament-loss-louisville\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/2026\/03\/19\/usf-bulls-season-ends-with-first-round-ncaa-tournament-loss-louisville\/\">USF Bulls\u2019 season ends with first-round NCAA tournament loss to Louisville<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Bulls were eliminated from the tournament after losing 83-79 to Louisville in their matchup Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Benchmark International Arena will host eight teams for the first two rounds of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Texas Tech takes on Akron in the first game this afternoon, followed by Alabama against Austria. Clemson faces Iowa in the evening, and the Florida Gators take on Prairie View A&amp;M in the final matchup. The Gators are the number one seed out of the South region.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; The first round of March Madness for NCAA Men\u2019s College Basketball begins today in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1412,92285,31016,33737,92284,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-199597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-benchmark-international-arena","tag-first-round-ncaa","tag-florida-gators-basketball","tag-march-madness","tag-ncaa-tournament-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199597","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=199597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}