Its NCAA Tournament Time. Gators are #1 Overall

16 Mar, 2014

The Gators earned the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in school history. The other time they took it? 2007, when they won the national championship.

The selection committee released its pairings Sunday, not long after the Gators defeated Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference tournament final to bring their winning streak to 26 games.

‘It’s kind of what we expected,” said guard Scottie Wilbekin, the SEC’s player of the year and tournament MVP. ”It feels good. Obviously, it doesn’t matter when the games start playing.”

Florida (32-2) will open tournament play Thursday in Orlando, Fla., in the South Region. The Gators will face the winner of Albany (18-14) and Mount St. Mary’s (16-16), two 16 seeds that play Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio.

”We’ve got to stay locked in and not let it get to our heads,” Wilbekin added.

Florida’s road to Dallas could get considerably tougher after that, with No. 2 seed Kansas, No. 3 seed Syracuse and No. 4 seed UCLA all in the South. The Jayhawks, Orange and Bruins have a combined 15 national titles and plenty of experience on college basketball’s biggest stage.

The top seed in the Midwest is a Shocker: Wichita State finally got the nod after finishing No. 2 in the AP poll. The Shockers will play the winner of the play-in game between Big West tournament winner Cal Poly and Texas Southern. Michigan was seeded second and the defending-champion Louisville Cardinals were fourth.

Arizona got top billing in the West despite losing to UCLA in the Pac-12 final Saturday. The Wildcats will open Friday against Weber State.

Upstart Virginia earned the top seed in the East after beating Duke to win the ACC tournament title for the first time since 1976. The Cavaliers will face Coastal Carolina.

The Cavaliers face a rugged path if they want to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1984: Big East regular-season champion Villanova is the No. 2 seed, Big 12 tournament champion Iowa State is No. 3, Big 10 tournament champ Michigan State is No. 4.

Last year’s national champion, Louisville, was seeded fourth in the Midwest despite playing well enough to be considered a No. 1 by many.

The tournament begins Tuesday with a pair of First Four games, and things get going in earnest Thursday when 32 of the 64 teams in the main draw take to the floor.

In the end, the individual matchups mean much more than the numbers by a team’s name. Still, some of the numbers the selection committee came up with this year were head-scratchers — yet another reason Warren Buffet felt perfectly comfortable fronting the insurance money to pay a $1 billion prize to anyone who can fill out a perfect bracket.

The Final Four starts April 5 in Arlington, Texas.

AP

Image Fox Sports

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