The college basketball regular season is over, and the Florida Gators are gearing up for a pair of tournament runs to cap off the best year in a decade for the program.
Gators head coach Todd Golden previewed the SEC Tournament and also touched on the NCAA Tournament Wednesday while talking to the media. He also touched on Walter Clayton Jr.’s First Team All-American nod and some other yearly awards where he felt his players were snubbed.
Golden also provided an injury update on forward Sam Alexis who came off the availability report last week but suffered a setback in practice.
On potentially getting No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament
To be honest, I think it’s really important to us, but at the same time, I’m not sure how big of a difference our path would truly be, whether we’re the third or fourth one seed or the first or second two seed.
I think it probably would be pretty similar, in terms of the level of team that we compete against. Fifteen and 16 seeds, probably pretty equal, and then you look, seven, eight, nine, 10 seeds. Just looking on KenPom and you see, you look at the 25th best team down to 33 and I think the differentiation between those clubs is probably three points over 100 possessions. So it’s like matchups probably play a little bit more of a role into it, but we definitely want the one seed; don’t get me wrong.
But at this point I think we’re in a really good spot. So, pride-wise, we’re gonna do everything we can to get this one seed, but I’m confident in our potential whether we end up getting it or we’re a high two.
Would getting the No. 1 seed raise the profile of the program even further?
Yeah. I mean, probably, and I can make some cases as to why our program has reached some new heights and done some really special things. And I think people appreciate that about it anyways, but, yeah, that would be a nice little, cherry on top of our regular season if we’re able to get the one seed on Sunday.
