Joe Lunardi weighs in on Florida’s No. 1 seed chances after loss to Vandy
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Joe Lunardi is the ultimate master at the game of bracketology, and on the day before Selection Sunday he weighed in on Florida‘s suddenly tenuous situation when it comes to the Gators securing a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Florida was sailing along with a 12-game winning streak heading into Saturday afternoon’s SEC Tournament semifinal against No. 4 seed Vanderbilt, but the top-seeded Gators were stopped in their tracks in a shocking 91-74 loss. Sure, UF was way overdue to lose a basketball game, not having tasted defeat since way back on Jan. 24 against Auburn.
But Florida didn’t just lose on Saturday, it was dominated by the surging Commodores, who took a double-digit lead in the first half and cruised into Sunday’s title game in Nashville. The Gators trailed by 13 points at halftime and by a whopping 25 in the second half, which was Florida’s largest deficit in any game in 3 years.
That’s a lot of negative stuff to digest, particularly on the day before UF was primed to grab one of those No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament. Can the Gators overcome what happened on Saturday and live to tell about it with a No. 1 seed when the brackets are revealed on Sunday? Lunardi believes they can, and he believes they ultimately will, saying as much during the ESPN broadcast while UF was getting beat down.
“We tend to overreact to these results more than the (selection) committee does,” Lunardi said.
Lunardi then compared Florida’s case for a No. 1 seed with that of UConn.
“Florida is still going to be on the 1 line over UConn,” Lunardi said. “It comes down to body of work, not head-to-head. Florida was outright champion of (a) far better league, and UConn finished second in a lesser league.”
Here are the odds that the Kalshi market is currently giving for the teams in the mix for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament:
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.
