The UCLA Bruins and the Florida Gators are playing in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night in the NCAA tournament and the round will be streaming online from CBS and on the March Madness website from the FedExForum in Memphis and starts up around 9:45 pm ET after the Dayton and Stanford game and this South regional matchup has the Pac-12 and SEC champions going at it.
Billy Donovan has his team playing very well and after going through their conference without any losses, the team is hoping to do that same thing in the NCAA tournament. Donovan knows how to win championships and he has instilled that in his players and he has some great ones in Casey Prather along with Scottie Wilbekin and Dorian Finney Smith and now they will have the chance to matchup with the Bruins in Tennessee. The Gators come in after winning in the first round against Albany and then they won their second game, or the third round as the idiots at the NCAA call it against Pitt and now they play against UCLA.
The Bruins come in after winning the Pac-12 title over the Arizona Wildcats in the conference tournament and they come in after winning against Tulsa and then against SF Austin after that team upset VCU and now this is a classic one and four seed matchup. This part of the bracket played out exactly how it was supposed to, while the bottom part did not and now Dayton and Stanford got past Syracuse and Kansas and those seeds are out early in the tournament and Florida comes in as the favorite, as they are the number one overall seed in the tourney this year.
Florida got 21 points from Wilbekin and he has been great for the team all season and he was second in scoring, while Prather was tops with 14 points per game and he shot an astonishing 61 percent from the field this season. Finney-Smith has been solid and he is first on the team in rebounding with seven per game and Wilbekin was tops in assists and he will be relied upon to lead on Thursday night. The Gators have been to four Finals Fours in their history and this is the 18th time they have been in the tournament and they are a school with recent championships after getting those back to back wins years ago in the 2006 and 2007 tournaments.
The Gators have been averaging over 70 points per game this season and allowing the third fewest per contest and that makes it a tough matchup for UCLA, as Florida is giving up less than 60 points per game. The Gators have now won 28 games in a row after going through the SEC and the conference tourney undefeated and they would like to keep that going. The Bruins come in with Kyle Anderson as the focus for the gators and they have been one of the best offensive teams in the nation. The Bruins are scoring over 80 points per game and they were in the top five in assists per game during the season and ranked in the top 10 in shooting, going for nearly 50 percent from the field.
Check here for the Florida Gators and UCLA Bruins live coverage from the NCAA website for March Madness.