Florida Gators punch ticket to Final Four with win over Texas Tech
SAN FRANCISCO — The No. 1 seed Florida Gators are Final Four bound! UF punched its ticket to San Antonio with an 84-79 win over Texas Tech on Saturday in the Elite Elight.
Florida came back from nine points down with 3 minutes left, closing with an 18-4 run. Walter Clayton Jr. scored a team-high 30 points to take home West Regional MVP honors.
Thomas Haugh posted a double-double with 20 points, matching his career high, and 11 rebounds. Haugh was named to West Regional All-Tournament Team with Clayton.
It marks the sixth time in program history that the Gators have advanced to the Final Four. It last happened in the 2014 NCAA Tournament when Florida was also a 1-seed.
UF picked up its program-record 10th top-25 win, eight of which have come vs. teams in the top 12. The Gators have notched seven of their top-25 wins in the month of March alone.
Florida has now won 10 games in a row and 16 of its last 17. The Gators are 10-0 in the month of March and third-year coach Todd Golden has a team that can win it all in Texas.
“They’re a consistent group. They’re mature. They have a lot of care for each other. They play incredibly hard and they play incredibly unselfish,” Golden said. “It’s unique nowadays in college because of all the movement to get a group that cares about each other the way that our guys do. That was a big part of our plan for this year, was we had Will [Richard], Walt [Clayton], Zel [Aberdeen], Tommy [Haugh] and [Alex] Condo coming back, and we wanted to keep, build around those guys, make sure we added the right pieces. That roster continuity was huge for us.
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“Because when Alijah [Martin], Sam [Alexis], Rueben [Chinyelu] came in, specifically, and Isaiah [Brown] and Urbi [Klavzar] as freshmen, they come in and see these guys get along really well, see them being unselfish, hanging out, it’s easy to become a part of that. The unselfishness is what I keep going back to that I take a lot of pride in and I know our guys take pride in. Hopefully we can continue to build that on a year-to-year basis. It’s obviously not easy, and I’m not naive to think that we don’t have a special group this year. I know we do.”
Florida Gators in the Final Four
* Final Four Appearances: 5 (1994, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2014)
* National Championship Appearances: 3 (2000, 2006, 2007)
* National Championships: 2 (2006, 2007)
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