Vanderbilt stuns Florida in SEC semifinal upset, Gators’ No. 1 seed in jeopardy
Two months ago, Vanderbilt and Florida met in Nashville — one a top-10 contender, pacing the SEC and shooting as well from three as anyone in the country, and the other in need of a defining win. The subsequent upset announced a clear presence in college basketball.
Ring a bell?
Well, history has an odd way of repeating itself in cobbled-together forms. No. 4 Florida (the SEC’s No. 1 seed) entered Saturday’s SEC semifinal against No. 4-seeded Vanderbilt anything but worried. Such comes with a 12-game win streak and computer numbers that make even the geeks party on Broadway. But it now leaves the Music City a day early, a 91-74 loss in hand, with its potential of scoring a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament somewhere up in the air over New York City, where UConn plays in the Big East Championship on Saturday.
“We haven’t lost in 54 days or something leading up to this game, playing some of the best basketball in America. I do believe we’ve done enough to be the fourth No. 1 seed,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “But we’ll find out tomorrow night.”
And that is the uncomfortable position Florida (26-7) is in for the first time in three years. There will be no Sunday in Nashville, no NCAA Tournament selection show viewing period after the SEC Championship. That’s because there will be no SEC Championship for the Gators. The man who waits to hear his future is in an unenviable position, but surely one more attractive than that of the other billowing the SEC Tournament produced this week.
“I don’t really care,” Florida’s star forward, Thomas Haugh, told the Miami Herald. “Leave it to the committee.”
Lest forget, though, that Florida put itself here.
To both metrics and the eye, the Gators had developed during the past month. They found a scheme that thrust six players into averaging double digits, and the primary issue that plagued them, three-point shooting, had evaporated since late February. The Gators had four of their five best perimeter shooting games since Feb. 21. That upswing began with their first just down the road, when Vanderbilt was the 16-1 top dog that Florida dropped 98 on. The two, in a way, switched that Saturday afternoon — Vanderbilt falling from fourth in Torvik (a widely-recognized college basketball rating site) to 26th, and Florida rising from 11th to second. Each week, the Gators jumped through projected brackets until they found themselves, theoretically, atop the final region entering Nashville.
Their fortunes just happened to wear off at an inflection point, and as aggressively as possible.
The shooting that’d molded Florida comparable to its national championship predecessor shipped to Tennessee in a beaten 8-for-37 package, with Haugh serving as the only semi-efficient contributor with 19. Smelling blood in the water after Florida’s worst shooting night of the year (3 for 20) against Kentucky in the quarterfinals, Vanderbilt pounced early, draining six first-half threes. Unsurprising activity for a team whose top four scorers shoot 36% or better from deep. Season-long 28.2% three-point shooter Dwight McGlockton hitting three treys, though, arrived from right field.
“The bigs, they shot it well tonight,” Florida forward Alex Condon said. “They played with a good level of physicality. We have to do the same thing down the other end of the court.”
When Florida wasn’t missing a shot, it was largely because it didn’t attempt one. Florida’s rebounding machine notched 20 offensive boards, but logged only 14 second-chance points. The Gators also had nine first-half turnovers, many forced, and the Commodores tossed in 20 points by the break off them — forward Jalen Washington, a primary contributor with 17. Vandy’s star guard Tyler Tanner, who finished with 20, ran the length of the court smiling, unbothered, so often that Florida took to comforting him. Thus, all three of Florida’s frontcourt starters had three fouls by early in the second half — the product of Vanderbilt’s guards frequently spasming at the touch.
“The physicality that they played with bothered us,” Golden said. “We usually do that to other teams.”
The final minutes blurred together: missed free throws, a tech on Golden and a broken backboard prolonging escape. The locker room was as quiet as those of the teams whose seasons ended this week. No player on this Florida roster has watched an SEC Championship before, yet now the Gators get the pleasure of waiting and seeing whether their crumbling still warrants a spot along the top-seed line.
Golden took to the podium to present his closing arguments as to why this 17-point loss shouldn’t outweigh the weeks of transformation Florida had strung together. The bigger picture, he preached, matters most. It was the look of a man who hadn’t done this before, at least recently. And it might not be the end, anyway, given that more national champions have lost in their conference tournaments than won them in the last decade.
If history repeats itself, as it likes to, this might not be the time for concern.
But it doesn’t make waiting any more comfortable.
This story was originally published March 14, 2026 at 5:51 PM.
