UCLA vs Florida | Prediction & Pick

Bruins look to take away Florida’s Thunder

Two storied college basketball programs meet in a third round Southeast Region game in Tampa on Thursday as the 7th seeded UCLA Bruins play the 2nd seeded Florida Gators.

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#7 UCLA (23-10, 13-5 Pac-10) vs. #2 Florida (27-7, 13-3 SEC)

Date/Time: Saturday, March 19, 3:00 PM EST
Venue: St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, FL.
Broadcast: CBS

Money Line: UCLA +190, Florida -230
Spread: Florida -5
Over/Under: 131

The Gators who were the best team during the regular season in one of the power conferences (the SEC), and was rewarded with a high seed, and they proved they deserved it, racing out to a 43-19 halftime lead en route to a 28-point win over Santa Barbara on Thursday.

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Florida was bigger, faster, more skilled, and more athletic at nearly every position — and it showed as the Gators earned its first NCAA tournament win since beating Ohio State in the 2007 championship game, and improved to 8-3 in the round of 64 under Billy Donovan.

Erving Walker led four Gators in double figures with 18 points while Chandler Parsons was three rebounds shy of a triple-double.

For the Bruins, it was much tougher getting their ticket punched to round three as the eked out a nail biter against perennial powerhouse Michigan State. UCLA jousted the Spartans, trading free throws for 3-pointers. In the end, the Bruins escaped, 78-76.

Tyler Honeycutt and Malcolm Lee scored 16 points apiece as the Bruins, who are back in the tourney after a one-year absence fielded a team that starts five underclassmen and had just two players — Lee and another junior, Jerime Anderson — with NCAA experience before Thursday night.

Billy Donovan knows how to guide the Gators to Mecca, having done so in back-to-back seasons in 2006 and 2007.

This doesn’t mean that Donovan and the Gators will look past UCLA, because they won’t. They know that the Bruins can score points. UCLA uses balanced scoring and has four players averaging double figures, with Reeves Nelson leading the charge at 13.9 points per game.

Florida counters with balanced scoring. Four players are averaging double figures per game in points, led by Walker (14.4 PPG) and Kenny Boynton (14.1 PPG).

The odds makers have the Florida Gators as a -5 point favorite with an over/under of 131.

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This game will come down to a few clutch plays in the second half, as it figures to be a tight affair. We’ll lean towards Florida in this one.

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