Auburn And Florida Meet In The Final Four As Last Of The 14 Sec Teams That Packed March Madness

Auburn and Florida are the last two standing of a record 14 Southeastern Conference teams that made the NCAA Tournament. Only one of them will get to play for the national championship.

In a Final Four filled with No. 1 seeds, the SEC regular-season champion Tigers 32-5 play the conference tournament-winning Gators in the first national semifinal game Saturday in the Alamodome. The matchup pits All-Americans Johni Broome and Walter Clayton Jr. against each other yet again.

"The success that the league has had in the tournament has been pretty amazing," Gators coach Todd Golden said. "The league obviously got a lot of respect, a lot of notoriety after the non-conference. Once you get to elite play, people wonder how real it is. I believe the results we have had so far in the NCAA Tournament speak to that."

Florida 34-4, which has won 10 in a row since the start of March, twice during the regular season beat No. 1-ranked SEC teams. The Gators first won by 30 points at Tennessee, then a month later had a 90-81 win at Auburn on Feb. 8 that solidified how they felt about their team.

"It just gave us confidence because we always believed that we were the No. 1 team after we beat them," said Alijah Martin, the only Gators player with Final Four experience with FAU two years ago.