ESPN's Jay Bilas praises Florida Gators, believes their stock is rising ahead of Selection Sunday

ESPN’s Jay Bilas believes the Florida Gators are on the rise ahead of Selection Sunday and the NCAA Tournament.

During Saturday’s edition of College GameDay, Bilas explained why he’s a big believer in the Gators at the moment, and why a sizable run isn’t out of the question, as the madness looms large throughout March.

“I would say Florida,” Bilas responded, asked for a team who’s stock is rising. “I think Todd Golden has done a great job with that program. Florida is one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country. Their guards are dynamic. They can go off the dribble. They can knock down threes. Early in the season, I thought Florida was kind of like a King Air. Kind of bouncing around at low altitudes.

“Now, in the last month, they have become a jet. I mean, they are rolling. it is really impressive to watch Florida play.”

Coming off a huge win over Alabama on Friday, Florida is looking to stay alive in the SEC Tournament, with a clash against Texas A&M next on the docket. Their run in the conference tournament will only help their standing before tomorrow’s bracket reveal.

The Aggies are coming off a victory over Kentucky. The last time Florida matched up with the Aggies, the latter squeezed past the Gators 67-66 at home on Feb. 3 in College Station. We’ll see if Florida makes Jay Bilas proud on Saturday.

Todd Golden shares halftime message to his team in win over Alabama

The SEC Tournament was filled with upset, but none were more impressive than Florida‘s 102-point performance against the nation’s highest scoring team, Alabama, in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Now, this sets the Gators up with an unlikely SEC Tournament semifinal matchup against Texas A&M. Still, despite leading the Crimson Tide by 15 points at halftime, Florida head coach Todd Golden says the second half was an uphill battle to keep their distance from Alabama on the scoreboard.

“Alabama is not the type of team that you can ever take a breath,” Golden said postgame. “When you play them, regardless of whether we had the 15-point lead or not, we knew we were going to have to keep scoring, staying aggressive and playing hard for the remainder of the game if we wanted to win.

“Alabama, they scored 55 in the second half. Fortunately, we scored 54. It doesn’t really affect us much. But we knew we couldn’t go into the second half and think about starting to bleed clock or slow it down. We wanted to stay super, super aggressive, which I think we did a really good job of doing over the last 20 minutes.”

The game almost mirrored the final score of their matchup from March 5, which saw Florida defeat Alabama in Gainesville 105-87.

On3’s Barkley Truax contributed to this piece.