GAINESVILLE, Fla. — There’s only one way for the fourth-ranked Florida men’s basketball team to guarantee itself one of the four No. 1 seeds when the 68-team bracket for the NCAA Division I tournament is revealed Sunday night.
The Gators have to win the Southeastern Conference tournament that wraps up earlier that day.
And coach Todd Golden badly wants one of those No. 1 seeds in the NCAA field.
“We’re going to go try to win this thing,” he said emphatically Wednesday. “We’re going to give it all we got.”
Florida (27-4) is seeded second for the 16-team SEC tournament in Nashville after going 14-4 in league play during the regular season, and as one of the top four seeds, the Gators received a double bye into the quarterfinals, when they’ll play the third of Friday’s four games. Their opponent will be 21st-ranked, seventh-seeded Missouri (21-10) — which had a first-round bye — or 10th-seeded Mississippi State (21-11), a 91-62 winner over 15th-seeded LSU in Wednesday’s opening round.