One would have to take No. 5 Florida seriously as a national championship contender if record were the only factor on an NCAA Tournament resume.
Dig deeper into the Gators’ 26-4 overall record and 13-4 Southeastern Conference mark, and it’s even more evident Florida is fully capable of winning six straight games to be the champion of the 68-team NCAA field.
Coach Todd Golden is making his case before the Gators take the floor Saturday evening for the regular-season finale, in Gainesville, against visiting Ole Miss that his team won’t be happy with merely getting an invitation to the Big Dance.
“I think we’re one of the best teams in America,” Golden said Wednesday night after a 99-94 victory at seventh-ranked Alabama. “To (be) that, you have to go on the road and beat good teams.”
Which the Gators have certainly done. They own SEC road wins over No. 1 Auburn and then-No. 22 Mississippi State, in addition to dominant home victories against then-No. 1 Tennessee and then-No. 12 Texas A&M.
The latest big win was an offensive showcase that saw Florida ring up 58 points in the final 20 minutes. Alex Condon posted 27 points and 10 rebounds, while Walter Clayton delivered a 22-point, eight-assist masterclass in playing the point.
The Gators also dominated the glass 50-35 and committed just 10 turnovers in beating a top 10 team on the road for a second time, the first time in program history that’s happened.
As long as they don’t get upset on Saturday and win a game or two in the SEC tournament next week in Nashville, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA field appears likely.
“We think we’ve done enough,” Clayton said. “We think we’ve been winning games and shown who we are.”
The Rebels (21-9, 10-7) could make the same claim, albeit on a lesser scale. Already likely to receive an NCAA bid no matter how the next 10 days go, they bolstered an already good resume Wednesday night by stopping No. 4 Tennessee 78-76 in Oxford, Miss.
Jaemyn Brakefield grabbed the rebound of Sean Pedulla’s missed 3-pointer and scored with seven seconds left to snap a tie.
Pedulla, whose long 3-pointer on March 1 enabled Ole Miss to nip Oklahoma and emerge from a stretch of three straight losses, said that skid has motivated the team lately.
“We’re trying to play our best basketball going into March,” he said after the victory over Oklahoma, “but at the same time, it’s basketball and we were all just trying to have fun.”
Wednesday night’s victory was enough for the Rebels’ student section to ignore pleas from the public address announcer to stay in the seats, opting instead to storm the floor.
Besides possibly denying Tennessee a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Ole Miss might have played its way up the seed line. A win at Florida could be enough to get it a top-four seed and a regional assignment closer to home.
Pedulla paces the Rebels with averages of 14.9 points and 3.8 assists per game, while Clayton’s 17 ppg leads four Florida players in double figures.
–Field Level Media
