Generally speaking, if College GameDay is in town, the powers that be expect a close game. ESPN executives centered their day of college basketball around the nightcap of Florida vs. Arkansas, with the SEC regular season title hanging in the balance.
Instead, people who tuned in were treated to a 111-77 beatdown of epic proportions as the Gators made it clear that they have no intentions of relinquishing their national title now that the calendar has turned to March.
Florida demolishes Arkansas to win the SEC title
Todd Golden admitted after the game that while having College GameDay in town is a good thing for the program, there are headaches that come with it:
“Just a great night for our program. I think today, with GameDay here, just a lot of distractions, all great distractions, but distractions, and I thought our guys handled the moment and the opportunity like professionals. They were great and locked-in all day.
As a staff, we felt really good about our opportunity tonight with the way our guys approached practice and the way they handled walk-through today, and just the mentality that they had displayed.”
To Golden’s point, it can go straight to one’s head when ESPN arrives and spends all morning telling you how great you are when the job for 2026 is still far from done. It took about eight minutes for the Gators to crank into gear, but once they did, they put on a show that has the rest of the national title contenders looking around, going “Uh oh.”
Thomas Haugh led the way with 22 points, but seven different Florida players were in double digits. Rueben Chinyelu had another monster night on the glass with 16 rebounds, and the scariest part for the rest of the country is that Florida was 42% from three.
If Florida had played the student who hit the half-court shot during GameDay, he too probably would have scored against Arkansas.
The job is not done for Florida it terms of its endgame goal. The endgame goal is to still be playing in April.
But despite all the distractions, the Gators put a giant exclamation mark on their first regular-season SEC title since 2014.