Prairie View A&M tops Lehigh in First Four, faces Florida next - ESPN

DAYTON, Ohio — A year ago, Prairie View A&M had bottomed out, winning only five games, its fewest under coach Byron Smith.

At the same time, Dontae Horne was «down and depressed,» his career having stalled out after stops at Texas State and Georgia Southern. He didn't have many options in the portal because of concerns about his grades.

Fast-forward to Wednesday night, as Smith and Horne sat beside each other, celebrating Prairie View A&M's first NCAA tournament win, a 67-55 triumph against Lehigh in the First Four at UD Arena. Behind 25 points, seven rebounds and four steals from Horne, the No. 16 seed Panthers advanced to face No. 1 seed Florida in a first-round South region matchup Friday in Tampa.

«Losing sucks,» Smith said. «Everything is better when you win, just life is better. Everybody would like to be Coach [Nick] Saban — seven, eight national championships and be No. 1 preseason and in the final poll every year — but that's just not realistic. When you have seasons like we did the last two years, it really tests you as a coach and how much you really want to be doing this thing.»

Smith pushed forward behind a reshaped roster, which included key transfers in Horne, Cory Wells (Utah Valley), Tai'Reon Joseph (UTSA) and Lance Williams (Xavier-Louisiana). The new group engineered a historic turnaround, winning seven straight before the First Four and then pulling away Wednesday.

According to ESPN Research, Prairie View A&M became just the third team to win an NCAA tournament game following a season of five wins or fewer since the tournament expanded to 64 in 1985. The previous two, Iowa State and Fairleigh Dickinson, both won multiple games, including FDU's upset of No. 1 seed Purdue in 2023 after prevailing at the