TAMPA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A dominant frontcourt helped Florida earn another No. 1 seed and positioned the defending national champion\u2026<\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A dominant frontcourt helped Florida earn another No. 1 seed and positioned the defending national champion Gators for a chance at a repeat.<\/p>\n
They ran into a more physical team.<\/p>\n
Ninth-seeded Iowa played tougher inside the paint and across the court, knocking No. 1 seed Florida out of the NCAA Tournament<\/a> with a 73-72 victory<\/a> on Sunday in the second round. The Gators became the first top seed eliminated from this year\u2019s March Madness, and the first since Xavier in 2018 to fall to a No. 9 seed.<\/p>\n \u201cIf their plan was to try to finish over our size at the rim, I would live with that any day of the week,\u201d Florida coach Todd Golden said. \u201cThat\u2019s been a really bad formula for teams all year. We\u2019ve been one of the best 2-point field goal defenses in America. We just didn\u2019t to it tonight. Credit to them.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought they were tough and physical and did a good job finishing around the rim and we did not. We did not do a good enough job preventing them from finishing it, but if that\u2019s what they saw and they exploited it, then credit to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Tavion Banks, who led Iowa with 20 points, said he knew the Hawkeyes could pull off an upset after reviewing Florida\u2019s games.<\/p>\n \u201cThe physicality. We\u2019re in two different conferences; we\u2019re in the Big Ten, they\u2019re in the SEC,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I just know we\u2019re more physical. And after just watching the film and just seeing what they were doing, I just knew that we had an opportunity to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n It came down to the final seconds after Florida rallied from a 12-point deficit and had a 72-70 lead with 8.9 seconds remaining. Golden wanted his team to foul to prevent a 3-pointer, but Bennett Stirtz broke through the full-court press and saw Alvaro Folgueiras wide open in the corner. Folgueiras nailed the 3.<\/a><\/p>\n Xaivian Lee drove hard to the basket but tried unsuccessfully to dish the ball to Thomas Haugh, and the Gators didn\u2019t even get a final shot.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt he stepped up, maybe I could have shot a floater or pull up or something,\u201d Lee said. \u201cI was going pretty fast, and I thought I had time for the dunk in, but I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Condon led Florida with 21 points, Haugh had 19 and Lee added 17.<\/p>\n Rueben Chinyelu, who broke a school record with his 19th double-double of the season in a 59-point win over Prairie View on Friday night, was held to zero points and one rebound in 19 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the first half, I was just out of it,\u201d Haugh said. \u201cI just feel bad. I didn\u2019t make any plays, didn\u2019t do anything to help the team out to win the first half. But yeah, second half I thought we started to get in it. But they\u2019re a good team, and they just played way harder than us and hit more shots and just made more plays in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n Chinyelu, who had four fouls, only took one shot.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were not strong enough around the rim in the first half, nor were we able to get any deep post catches,\u201d Golden said. \u201cA lot of his opportunities around the glass as well, he had no offensive rebounds tonight. So I think a combination of that was the reason he was not as effective as normal.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida finished 27-8, missing an opportunity to advance to the Sweet 16 and continue its quest for another title.<\/p>\n An emotional Haugh stayed down on the floor after failing to handle Lee\u2019s pass at the end. Lee also was bent down in frustration.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to remember this feeling for a while,\u201d Condon said. \u201cI\u2019m just going to use it as motivation. I think it\u2019s going to make us better players individually just to know what this feeling is like, working hard all year to get into this position as a 1 seed and just letting it get away from us a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket<\/a> and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (AP) \u2014 A dominant frontcourt helped Florida earn another No. 1 seed and positioned the defending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-202010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202010","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=202010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}