In a Friday slate of March Madness games that went chalk to the extreme, No. 1 Florida’s dominance still stood out.
The Gators crushed No. 16 seed Prairie View A&M by the score of 114-55 to open their NCAA tournament campaign. At 59 points, that’s the second-largest margin of victory in March Madness history, and you have to go back six decades to find the largest.
One of the Gators’ more enormous fans approved.
The record-holder remains Loyola Chicago’s 111-42 win over Tennessee Tech (69 points) in 1963, the tournament in which the Ramblers won a championship with a ground-breaking all-Black lineup.
Funnily enough, Prairie View A&M was on the bad end of the previous second-largest blowout, a 110-52 loss to Kansas (58 points) in 1998.
Florida’s historic win was actually close for the first seven minutes or so. Prairie View, which reached the game by defeating Lehigh in the First Four, never led, but they did have the game tied at 15-15 at one point in the first half. However, there were signs that one team might have had the upper hand.
Florida then scored the next 18 points and went on a 45-6 run overall to close the first half. The second half saw the Gators coast to a widely expected victory, never leading by fewer than 38 points. Their largest lead was 63 points.
None of this was exactly surprising, as Florida entered the game as the biggest favorite in a March Madness game since 1999.
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