Florida finds out first-round NCAA Tournament opponent on road to repeat
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Florida’s path to a repeat national championship begins on Friday night, but the SEC regular-season champions had to wait a few days longer to find out who they would be facing in the first round.
That answer finally came on Wednesday night in Dayton, Ohio, where Prairie View A&M fought its way past Lehigh, 67-55, in a First Four game. For Florida fans who don’t know who Prairie View is, the team is nicknamed “Panthers,” and it hails from the tiny SWAC.
This will be the ultimate David vs. Goliath situation come Friday night in Tampa, with those Panthers and Gators facing off at around 9:25 p.m. ET on TNT. Because not only will it be a SWAC team vs. an SEC team, it will be a SWAC team that finished 8th in its conference during the regular season and had to win its way through the SWAC Tournament last week just to get to Dayton.
With all that accomplished, including Wednesday night’s First Four victory over the Patriot League champions from Lehigh, what do the 16th-seeded Panthers get as a reward? That would be mighty Florida, which blew through the SEC during the regular season after winning it all last year.
Prairie View will take a 19-17 record into the 1-16 matchup, having just snuck over .500 overall with that victory last Saturday in the SWAC Tournament final.
Just to add to the magic of its recent run, Wednesday night’s victory was Prairie View’s first NCAA Tournament win in program history.
And what did the Panthers do after their historical accomplishment set them up for a date with Florida? They celebrated hard in the locker room, of course.
With Prairie View as its first-round foe, here is what the Kalshi market currently sees for Florida in its quest to win the whole thing for the second year in a row:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
