Walter Clayton Jr.'s defensive stop
gives Florida its 3rd national title with 65-63 win over Houston
[April 08, 2025]
By EDDIE PELLS
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. came up with the
perfect going-away present for that spirit-crushing Houston defense
that bullied, battered and bedeviled him all night.
It was a defensive gem of his own. Right before the buzzer. For the
win and the national title.
The Gators and Clayton somehow overcame Houston’s lockdown
intensity, along with a 12-point deficit Monday night to will out a
65-63 victory in an NCAA title-game thriller decided when the
Florida senior's own D stopped the Cougars from even taking a
game-winning shot at the buzzer.
Clayton finished with 11 points, all in the second half. What he’ll
be remembered for most was getting Houston’s Emanuel Sharp to stop
in the middle of his motion as he tried to go up for the
game-winning 3 in the final seconds.
“Just go 100 percent,” Clayton said when asked what he was trying to
do at the finish. “We were just trying to get a stop, and we
happened to get it. I’m happy we got it done.”
With Sharp looking for room, Clayton ran at him. The Houston guard
dropped the ball and, unable to pick it up lest he get called for
traveling, watched it bounce.
Alex Condon dived on the ball, then flipped it to Clayton, who ran
to the opposite free-throw line with the buzzer sounding and tugged
his jersey out of his shorts. Next, the court was awash in Gator
chomps and orange and blue confetti.
“We guarded them hard and then I saw the ball loose and I just hoped
we beat them to the ball,” Florida coach Todd Golden said.
This marked the fourth comeback in six March Madness wins for the
Gators (36-4). They led this game for a total of 64 seconds,
including the last 46 ticks of a contest that was in limbo until the
final shot that never came.
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson called it “incomprehensible” that the
Cougars couldn't get a shot off on either of their last two
possessions.
About the last one, Sampson said: “Clayton made a great play. But
that’s why you’ve got to shot fake and get into the paint. Two’s
fine.”
Will Richard had 18 points to keep the Gators in it, and they won
their third overall title and first since Billy Donovan went
back-to-back in 2006-07.
This time, it's Golden, in his third year, bringing the title back
to Gainesville, where the Gator faithful can celebrate a win on one
of college sports' grandest stages for the first time since Tim
Tebow was playing quarterback for the football team in 2008.
This was the first hoops title for the Southeastern Conference since
Kentucky in 2012, and the outcome the power conference was hoping
for (expecting?) after placing a record 14 teams in the tournament.
The Cougars (35-5) and Sampson were denied their first championship,
and ended up in the same spot as the colorful Phi Slama Jama teams
from the 1980s — oh-so-close in second place.
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Florida celebrates after beating Houston in the national
championship at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball
tournament, Monday, April 7, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric
Gay)
This was a defensive brawl — the Gators failed to
crack 70 for only the second time all season — and for most of the
night, Clayton got the worst of it.
He was 0 for 4 from the field without a point through the first
half. Met at the top of the circle, then double-teamed and trapped
when necessary, he didn’t score until hitting two free throws with
14:57 left.
The player who scored at least 30 points in the last two games, who
averaged 24.6 through the first five games of the tournament, who
almost singlehandedly outscored UConn and Texas Tech down the
stretch of those March Madness comebacks, finished with one
3-pointer. Before that, he had a pair of three-point plays off
drives to the hoop that kept the Gators in striking range. He
finished 3 for 10.
He also became part of not one, but two stops that put these Gators
in the history book, and possibly cemented himself as the best
basketball player to wear the orange and blue.
After Alijah Martin made two free throws to put Florida ahead 64-63
— its first lead since 8-6 — the Gators lured Sharp into a
triple-team in the corner, where Clayton pressured him, and then
Richard got him to dribble the ball off his leg and out of bounds.
Florida made one free throw on the next possession and that set up
the finale.
The ball first went to L.J. Cryer, who led the Cougars with 19
points. Blanketed by Richard, he threw to Sharp, who was moving to
spot up for a 3 when Clayton ran at him. That left him with no
choice but to let the ball go.
“It was a great defensive play by Walter," Condon said. “I just
dived on it, and hearing the buzzer go was a crazy feeling.”
Instead of the 69-year-old Sampson becoming the oldest coach to win
the title, the 39-year-old Golden becomes the youngest since N.C.
State's Jim Valvano in 1983 to win it all.
This gut-wrenching loss came two nights after the Cougars fashioned
a wild comeback of their own, from 14 down against Duke.
All three Final Four games were decided down the stretch, none by
more than Florida's six-point win over Auburn on Saturday. Any
thought that the men’s game had been overtaken by the increasingly
popular women will probably go on hold at least for a year.
The three women's Final Four games, capped by UConn's blowout of
South Carolina on Sunday, were decided by an average of 24.7 points.
“When it gets down to the two best teams left,” Sampson said of the
thriller he barely lost, “it’s not going to be easy for either
team.”
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