Florida now knows who it will play in Round One of the NCAA Tournament after Prairie View A&M knocked off Lehigh in the First Four to move on to a date with the defending national champions. Only twice in NCAA Tournament history has a No. 16 seed knocked off a No. 1 seed and it would a shock for this game to be close at all, let alone for an actual upset to happen.
And it’s not just we here at Hail Florida Hail who expect Prairie View’s Cinderella run to come to a screeching halt; initial odds from Vegas envision a game that could be over by the first commercial.
Florida is a massive favorite over Prairie View A&M
Prairie View A&M will have a solid story to tell no matter what happens on Friday. The Panthers won just five games last season before putting together a respectable 9-9 campaign in the SWAC this season. But they were still the No. 8 seed in the SWAC Tournament before they pieced together four wins over five days that culminated with a 72-66 win over Southern in the SWAC title game.
They also fell behind against Lehigh in the First Four before staging a comeback to win 67-55.
It’s a fun Cinderella story, but Vegas doesn’t care for a Cinderella story.
Initial odds have Florida favored by 33.5 points, the single-highest spread of any game in the tournament.
There are a ton of factors that have this spread as inflated as it is. Prairie View doesn’t shoot the ball well (289th in shooting percentage), they foul a ton (326th in fouls per game), and they don’t really move the ball around at all on offense (346th in assists to field goals made).
And while the Panthers do tend to try and swarm on defense and do force a lot of turnovers, the single biggest area that is prone to let this game get out of hand is that Prairie View A&M is 345th in the country in defensive rebounding percentage.
Rueben Chinyelu might have 20 rebounds by halftime.
If Florida really wanted to put the hammer down, they could win this game by 40, but we have a feeling Todd Golden will pull back in the final four minutes, which could let the Panthers cover the spread.
Either way, any win less than 20 points is going to raise some major alarm bells moving forward.