SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Florida has gone from being picked to finish sixth in the rugged Southeastern Conference to pushing all the way to the final Monday night of the season.

Now the Gators face a Houston team that just pushes teams around with its suffocating defense.

Big 12 champion Houston and Florida will meet in the national championship game in the Alamodome to wrap up only the second NCAA Tournament when all the No. 1 seeds made it to the Final Four.

Still, this title game matchup is quite a surprise, and features two teams that haven’t been this far in a long time. BetMGM Sportsbook had Florida listed as a 1 1/2-point favorite.

The Cougars (35-4) won their semifinal Saturday night by overcoming a 14-point deficit in the final eight minutes for a 70-67 stunner over Duke and freshman sensation Cooper Flagg, the AP national player of the year.

That was after Florida (35-4), with All-America guard Walter Clayton Jr. scoring 34 points, only had to come back from eight points down after halftime in its 79-73 win over SEC rival Auburn.

Houston, which has an 18-game winning streak, is in its first national championship game since back-to-back appearances in 1983 and 1984 during the Phi Slama Jama era.

This is Florida’s first since winning its back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007 under Billy Donovan. The Gators, with third-year coach Todd Golden, have an 11-game winning streak since a loss at Georgia at the end of February.

“It’s pretty incredible,” Golden said. “In three years, been fortunate to build a great staff that is aligned, that works really hard for each other. Then we’ve just accumulated a great group of guys on our roster. It took a little bit to get all these pieces together. But to a man, they all pull the same direction.”

The Cougars have won 30 of their last 31 games since two overtime losses over three days in a tournament in Las Vegas at the end of November. Their only loss since was 82-81 in OT on Feb. 1 to Texas Tech, an Elite Eight team. Their other loss this season: 74-69 to Auburn in the second game.

Coach Kelvin Sampson and Houston also made the Final Four four years ago, losing to eventual champion Baylor in the national semifinal in the NCAA tourney in a bubble in Indianapolis because of the COVID-19 pandemic. L.J. Cryer, now Houston’s leading scorer, was a freshman for the Bears on that title team.

Now the Cougars will play for a championship after being the first Texas team to make a Final Four held in the Lone Star State — after so much talk about the other teams that made it to San Antonio.

“This whole year, I’ve been trying to stay off social media and stuff like that. I really don’t see those type of things,” Cryer said. “I try just to listen to coach Sampson, and he believed we were the best team in the tournament, so that’s the only person I listened to.”

Florida entered Saturday’s semifinals ranked No. 2 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency by scoring 129.1 points per 100 possessions, and Clayton had his second 30-point game in a row. He is the leading scorer in this NCAA tourney with 123 points (24.6 per game) and has made 18 of 32 shots (.563) with 8 of 16 3-pointers the past two games.

Houston was ranked first in adjusted defensive efficiency at 87.4 points per 100 possessions, and was one of only four schools — all the teams that made the Final Four — to rank among the KenPom.com top 10 for both offense and defense. The Cougars were at 123.9 points to rank 10th offensively.

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Nashville is not close to getting an MLB franchise.

The people who want to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville have a logo and are selling baseball hats. Music City Baseball picked out the team name, the Nashville Stars in 2019, and six years later there is a hat and logo. There is still no indication that Major League Baseball plans to add two teams in the near future. The move of John Fisher’s Athletics franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas has hit a number of roadblocks and Stu Sternberg’s Tampa Bay Rays franchise pulled out of stadium-village deal with municipal partners, the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, Florida. MLB has maintained that it would not expand until stadium situations in Oakland and the Tampa Bay market were resolved. The problems remain and there are stadium issues that have cropped up in Chicago, White Sox ownership wants a new stadium, Kansas City and Phoenix.

In December, 2024, the mayor of Nashville, Freddie O’Connor threw cold water on the possibility that his city could take on a Major League Baseball expansion franchise or go after an existing franchise that might be on the market. O’Connor appearing on a local radio show told host George Plaster that Nashville does not have the ingredients to take on an MLB business. Music City Baseball is led by John Loar but O’Connor seems to think that Loar’s group lacks some sort of credibility. O’Connor talked about one of the ingredients that would be necessary for Nashville to land a team. The city needs a baseball stadium. If someone wants to build a stadium and is willing to pay for the structure and the land needed for the facility, he would listen and possibly work with the group. Nashville is not paying the freight for an MLB venue. It is still early in the MLB expansion process but Music City Baseball has a baseball cap.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd didn’t even need much help from superstar Paige Bueckers to propel UConn into the national title game, leading the Huskies to a remarkably easy 85-51 victory over UCLA on Friday night in the Final Four of the women’s NCAA Tournament.

Strong finished with 22 points and Fudd scored all of her 19 points in the first half for the second-seeded Huskies, who are one win away from their 12th national championship and first since the team won four straight from 2013-16, led by Breanna Stewart. The eight-year title drought is the longest for the Huskies since they won their first in 1995.

“We aren’t worried about the past. Every single day you walk into the gym and live up to the standard of playing UConn basketball,” Bueckers said. “Not comparing yourself to other teams and players before. We want to fill their shoes and make them proud. Wear the jersey with pride.”

UConn will face defending champion South Carolina on Sunday for the title after the Gamecocks beat Texas 74-57 earlier Friday night. It’s a rematch of the 2022 championship game, which the Gamecocks won 64-49. The teams met in February and UConn shocked South Carolina with a 29-point road victory.

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SOUTH CAROLINA WANTS TO REPEAT.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The journey has been more challenging than usual, but Dawn Staley and defending national champion South Carolina are still getting the job done.

The Gamecocks (35-3) overwhelmed Southeastern Conference rival Texas 74-57 on Friday night in the Final Four of the women’s NCAA Tournament, advancing to the title game Sunday against UConn (36-3), an 85-51 winner over No. 1 overall seed UCLA.

Coach Geno Auriemma’s Huskies traveled to Columbia, South Carolina, in the regular season and dominated the Gamecocks, winning 87-58 on Feb. 16.

This is the seventh time The Associated Press preseason Nos. 1 and 2 teams will play in the women’s NCAA championship game. South Carolina beat UConn in the 2022 title game after the teams began that season ranked 1-2.

The No. 1 preseason team is 6-0 in the previous title games against the preseason No. 2. The Huskies’ Paige Bueckers will try to end that streak as she seeks a national title, the only prize left in a remarkable collegiate career. UConn’s loss to South Carolina in 2022 concluded an injury-marred sophomore season for Bueckers, who is expected to be the top overall pick in the WNBA draft.

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