Florida roar back to break Houston hearts and capture third NCAA title

The Gators looked cooked. Down 12. Their All-American guard scoreless. The crowd inside a hangar-like 70,000-seat football stadium, just 198 miles down the road from Houston’s campus, was a deafening sea of scarlet red.

And yet Florida found a way. In one of the most dramatic NCAA men’s championship games in recent memory, the Gators and Walter Clayton Jr overcame Houston’s suffocating defense to pull off an astonishing 65–63 victory on Monday night – a national title game thriller not decided until Florida’s own defense sealed it at the buzzer.

Clayton finished with 11 points, all in the second half, but what he’ll be remembered for most was the final moment: sprinting at Houston’s Emanuel Sharp, who was trying to spot up for a potential game-winning three. Clayton’s closeout forced Sharp to stop mid-motion, and in that moment of hesitation, Sharp dropped the ball. He couldn’t pick it up again without traveling. It bounced away while the clock ticked to zero and the Gators stormed the court in celebration.

“Our motto is, we all can go,” said Clayton, whose 713 points this year broke the program’s single-season record. “We’ve got a team full of guys that can go. It ain’t just about me. My team held me down until I was able to put the ball in the basket. Shout out to them boys.”

Florida (36–4) claimed their third NCAA men’s basketball title and first since 2007, completing a postseason run fueled by resilience, timely shot-making and relentless defense. The Gators trailed for 39 minutes and 43 seconds overall and hadn’t led since 8–6 until the final minute, when Alijah Martin calmly hit two free throws with 46.5 seconds remaining to give them a 64–63 lead. Then came a series of plays that flipped the script on college basketball’s stingiest defense, the best in the country by anymetric.

Houston (35–5), seeking their first championship in the program’s 80-year history, was undone by Florida’s defense down the stretch. After Martin’s free throws, the Gators lured Sharp into a triple-team in the corner. Will Richard knocked the ball off Sharp’s leg and out of bounds. Florida added one more point at the line, then set up for one final stop. They’d get it.

“We did what we did all year,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “We stayed the course. We have the best backcourt in America. I think we have the best frontcourt in America. And like we’ve done all year, we made plays when we needed them the most. We guarded our butts off down the stretch. [We] made every 50-50 winning play.”

The first half wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was downright brutal for stretches. Both teams opened the game a combined 0-for-14 from beyond the arc, seven missed by each team. Clayton, Florida’s electric combo guard, was held scoreless after back-to-back 30-point outbursts against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight and Auburn on ...