{"id":85787,"date":"2025-03-17T18:28:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T23:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/jay-bilas-florida-is-peaking-at-the-right-time-ahead-of-ncaa-tournament\/"},"modified":"2025-03-17T18:28:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T23:28:46","slug":"jay-bilas-florida-is-peaking-at-the-right-time-ahead-of-ncaa-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/jay-bilas-florida-is-peaking-at-the-right-time-ahead-of-ncaa-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Bilas: Florida is \u2018peaking at the right time\u2019 ahead of NCAA Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida<\/a><\/strong> earned itself a No. 1 seed in March Madness after beating Missouri<\/a><\/strong>, Alabama<\/a><\/strong> and Tennessee<\/a><\/strong> in consecutive days to win the SEC Tournament in Nashville. It\u2019s the Gators\u2019 fifth conference tournament title in program history.<\/p>\n

ESPN\u2019s Jay Bilas<\/a> has been high on the Gators all season, and continued his praise for head coach Todd Golden and his squad ahead of the NCAA Tournament. Joining Paul Finebaum during his show on Monday afternoon, <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re an impressive group, and they\u2019re, I think, peaking at the right time,\u201d Bilas told Finebaum. \u201cAnd it may seem trendy, but I think people are just reacting to what they see when you watch them beat Tennessee. It was methodical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida has won 12 of its last 13 games dating back to Feb. 4, and are riding a six-game win streak heading into their NCAA Tournament slate. During that stretch, the Gators have wins over Auburn<\/a><\/strong>, Texas A&M<\/a><\/strong>, Missouri, Alabama twice and Tennessee. <\/p>\n

Their success followed a stretch where Florida went 5-3 to begin SEC play. Before that, Florida had won its first 13 games of the regular season. Impressively, they\u2019ve almost mirrored that streak to end the season against a conference that sent a record 14 teams to the NCAA Tournament. <\/p>\n

\u201cI said a couple of weeks ago that I thought they were the best team in the country, and the way they\u2019re playing right now, the pieces that they have and how well they mesh together,\u201d Bilas continued. \u201cThey\u2019ve got four legitimate big guys that are really good that could start anywhere, and they just shuffle them in and out. They offensive rebound, they protect the rim. They are skilled. They screen off help extraordinarily well. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that there\u2019s anyone that may have a group of guards that are as good as Florida\u2019s. I\u2019m not sure anybody\u2019s got anybody better than those four guards, and then you put Urban Klavzar<\/a><\/strong> in as the fifth \u2014 that\u2019s a tough combo there. And those guys can all score, they can all defend. Will Richard<\/a><\/strong> and Alijah Martin<\/a><\/strong> get a lot of steals. Martin gets them on the ball, and Richard gets them off the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gators will look to ride this wave of momentum into their opening NCAA Tournament game against Norfolk State on Friday. Norfolk State defeated SC State 66-65 in the MEAC Tournament final to clinch its spot in the Big Dance. Tip-off is scheduled for 6:50 p.m. ET and will air live on TNT.<\/p>\n

The post Jay Bilas: Florida is \u2018peaking at the right time\u2019 ahead of NCAA Tournament<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida earned itself a No. 1 seed in March Madness after beating Missouri, Alabama and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}