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ESPN model predicts outcome of Florida-Houston national championship game
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ESPN’s matchup predictor is just that — a model that takes everything it knows into account and spits out a percentage that it believes each team has to win a game.
On Monday night in San Antonio, that game is a very big game. Like, the biggest game of the college basketball season. It pits SEC powerhouse Florida against Big 12 powerhouse Houston, who will collide after both rallied to win their Final Four semifinals on Saturday night. While both are No. 1-seed behemoths, the Gators are the slight betting favorite, according to BetMGM, which has UF as a 1.5-point favorite in the final game of the college basketball season.
But then a look at that ESPN matchup predictor tells a little different story. Because the model actually gives Houston a sizable 65.4% shot at being the ones cutting down the nets late Monday night at the Alamodome. That conversely means the high-octane Gators, who’ve shown incredible might and incredible resilience in getting this far, are getting only a 34.6% piece of the pie to prevail and win their third national title.
Those first 2 national championships came in 2006 and ’07 under Billy Donovan, who took the time earlier Monday to wish his beloved Gators good luck against the Cougars.
Houston has its own cherished basketball history, highlighted by those back-to-back appearances in the national title game in 1983 and ’84. But the Cougars lost both times and as strong a tradition as they have, Houston has never won a national championship.
The ESPN model believes that drought might be ready to end on Monday night.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
