SAN ANTONIO — The Florida basketball practice complex was quiet in July 2022.
Todd Golden was in the air, then on the ground, in Chicago. Moments later, he was boarding a plane again, flying to Los Angeles for his third stop in as many days. And so the program-resurrection cycle continued in his first months in Florida.
With every location, there was a pit stop to pitch his new analytics-driven approach to, well, everything. He was assembling a roster and doing it his way, scanning the nooks and crannies of the college basketball world for those who had been looked over.
That came with a goal. Florida basketball needed to reestablish itself. A revert to how things had been nearly two decades earlier when it won consecutive championships in 2006 and 2007.
Florida completed that quest in the national championship on Monday night, sponsored by an unheralded group that never withered. With a back-breaking, elbow-throwing 65-63 win against top-seeded Houston, the Gators ascended to the top of the college basketball dais yet again.
“We got the basketball program back where it belongs,” Golden said, surrounded by his team on the court after the game as confetti rained. “They compete, and they find a way to win. They’re winners and they continue to find a way to win.”
But it surely wasn’t easy.
Florida’s final two-point margin was its largest of the game, which saw its notably quick offense sink into the slow-paced, grueling ways of a Houston system that was 360th out of the 364 Division I teams in adjusted tempo. The Coogs got what they wanted, holding Florida to 65 points — its second-lowest total this season. They even got the lead their top-ranked defense could’ve only dreamed of, creating a seemingly impenetrable 12-point gap early in the second half.
But it didn’t matter, because it never was going to. In the same way Florida escaped from the abyss against Auburn and Texas Tech, willing itself through an NCAA Tournament where it trailed in the second half in three different games, it worked its way back again.
And that’s when the final moments unfold. Alijah Martin, Florida’s senior guard and deserving March Madness finisher, knocked down a pair of free throws to take a one-point lead, 64-63, with 46 seconds left. From there, it all mixed together.
“Down the stretch, we just made some big-time winning plays defensively. It's all kind of cloudy and a blur,” Golden said. “Next thing I knew, game was over.”
What happened was a series of jarring events. After Martin’s free throw, Houston redshirt junior guard Emanuel Sharp brought the ball down the court, but with a swipe, it batted off his leg out of bounds. Houston was fourth in the nation in turnover rate, but that still isn't a big deal, right? It’ll get another possession.
Now there’s 20 seconds left. Houston had the ball again after Florida desperately tried to turn it over, but ultimately added another free throw to take a two-point lead. The championship of the strongest Final Four field ever (including four out of the eight highest-rating KenPom teams in history) came down to that moment, and Sharp, again, caught the ball. This time he rose.
So enter Walter Clayton Jr., albeit later than expected, but in a scene he had starred in often. And as Sharp prepared to fire, the senior All-American guard flew at him. And so Sharp drops the ball, unable to touch but desperately shielding everyone in blue from the globus cruciger as it bounces. And then Florida sophomore forward Alex Condon sprints from the front court and dives at it, fittingly ending the bloodbath messily on the floor as the buzzer sounds.
“It was a great defensive play by Walter,” Condon said, clad in a “national champion” hat after the game. “It was going to be a travel if [Sharp] picked it up. Just diving on it, hearing the buzzer go was a crazy feeling. Didn't feel real.”
The bits and pieces of that made Florida different from the start. Not two hours earlier at tipoff. Not even in November, when the Gators entered the year No. 21 in the AP Poll.
The Gators were different when Golden arrived in Gainesville, or maybe when Clayton Jr. joined him last year because they could adapt. And that was by Golden’s design. He built a team that didn’t feature a top-100 prospect. But it could go into the locker room an offensive giant, having scored 79 points in each of its last 18 games, and come out a fighter, prepared to enter the boxing ring Houston constructed in San Antonio.
A defense that had improved from 91st to 10th in defensive efficiency this year behind the handy work of Golden’s Columbia-rooted analytical prowess would end the game.
Because of course.
And, obviously, it was Clayton Jr. who would be Florida’s defensive savior. The March Madness star that hit shot after shot to heave Florida to the national championship but had disappeared under the Cougar's zoom-action-destroying game plan. The same man who averaged 22.3 points per game in the tournament (which, for whatever it’s worth, would’ve been second in the nation this year), but didn’t score until 25 minutes into the game.
He wasn’t alone, however, in the offensive oblivion early on. Florida and Houston missed their first 13 attempts from beyond the arc, but that rate didn’t hold forever. And that’s when the rest of Florida’s meticulously designed weapon came in.
The final stop on Golden’s recruiting roundup in the summer of 2022 was in Nashville. He met Will Richard, a lanky Belmont guard who wanted to build something — a twin drive to that of the then-36-year-old head coach entering his first Power Four job (and, now, potentially last). Richard was Golden’s first commit, and as a senior in his third year at Florida, he had never had a bigger moment than when he hit the first 3-pointer of the evening.
“[I was] just trying to make plays to help us stay in the game, help us give ourselves the best chance to win,” Richard said before Clayton Jr. chimed in: “Never know whose night it's going to be.”
Florida had six players lead the team in scoring in a game this year, the most in the nation, and, as the Naismith gods would have it, Richard weathered the storm of Clayton Jr.’s abysmal start. He scored 14 of his team-high 18 points in the first half, keeping Florida within shouting distance, down three at the break. From there, the Gators did what they had already done 35 times this season.
They found a way.
While it wasn’t one of the 80-plus-point offensive performances that guided it to the Final Four, Florida watched the game unfold and adjusted the same way it had throughout the season.
In this case, it cut its turnover total from nine in the first half to only four in the second. It also meant wandering away from the 3-point line, where it shot 4 for 14 to open the game, and leaning into the paint to shoot 19 second-half free throws. It hit 15 of those — a jarring number when you realize it only had two attempts in the first half.
“Houston was guarding us great. They do a great defense out there. Everyone knows them for that,” Richard said. “[We] just [kept] trying to make plays to help us stay in the game, help us give ourselves the best chance to win.”
That’s where Clayton Jr. leaps into this script. Or, maybe, more of stumbles into it.
After a missed jumper — 0 for 5 — and a frustration foul, he walked off the built-out Final Four court with 14 minutes remaining, shaking his head. The in-house broadcast flashed to his face at least once every possession during the two minutes he sat on the bench, so he didn’t transform. There was no closet to jump into and change. No curtain or revolving door. But things were different from then on.
His first basket was an and-one layup that tied the game for the first time since early in the first half. From there, he unleashed, scoring 11 critical second-half points. In all of that, he never had the signature, game-defining moment he championed throughout the NCAA Tournament.
But when he hit his sole 3 of the night to tie the game with three minutes left, rolling around a pick in a way Houston never let any other team do this season, you could tell damn well he was the best player on the court. That was solidified amid the chaos of the postgame processions when he was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
This, as they say, isn’t surprising.
So there he was, running out on a shooter to make the play of a lifetime, and a paradigm solidified itself. Just as they did every other game this postseason, the Gators won because they had Clayton Jr. and the other team didn’t.
“Walter's defense in the second half was great,” Golden said. “[He] just found a way to win the ballgame.”
And then the night roared. Florida, having completed the third-largest comeback in national championship history, sprinted in every direction as orange and blue fell from the Texas sky. Moments later, Clayton Jr. collapsed into the arms of Golden, lamenting their journey.
“We did it, man!” Golden said, joyously wrapping his hands around the back of Clayton Jr.’s head. “We did this.”
He had just become the youngest head coach to win a national title since the tournament’s expansion in 1985, and it came in a perfect contrast. Monday featured the largest age gap (30 years) between head coaches in the national championship, with Houston’s Kelvin Sampson, 69, facing Golden, 39. While one played methodically, the other championed aggression and adaptability, and that saved Florida as the night progressed.
“I'm just a piece of this puzzle,” Golden said, immediately brushing away any credit for what had just occurred over the previous hours. “I'm proud to be the head coach of Florida. I'm proud of the way our players performed. I'm proud of the way our staff prepared our guys to become national champions.”
It wasn’t without bumps and brief potholes. On Sept. 27, the University of Florida’s Title IX office launched an investigation into Golden following a Title IX complaint filed against him. While the investigation concluded on Jan. 27, citing that it found no evidence to support the allegations, there remains little public information regarding the situation. In addition, Florida assistant coach Taurean Green remains amid a Title IX investigation, which ESPN first reported on Jan. 16.
But that feels lightyears away right now. After the media hoopla, the night in San Antonio is much quieter. Few wander outside the Alamodome, however, Green, Golden and the Gators are surely celebrating, riding along the Riverwalk. And deservingly so.
It was a renaissance of sorts. After eight years of college basketball irrelevance, 11 away from the Final Four and 18 since its last national championship, Florida is atop the college basketball world.
This was all but expected. Entering the year outside the top 25 in KenPom — the widely utilized college basketball metric site — a successful season would’ve been another step forward, winning coach Golden’s first NCAA Tournament game or maybe two.
So, instead, Florida won 36 games, the most in program history. So, it toppled the top team in the nation three times, including a then-program-defining Final Four win against Auburn only two days ago. So, it secured an SEC Tournament championship for the first time in over a decade. So, it even witnessed its sole player in program history earn first-team All-American honors, as Clayton Jr. swept nearly every national outlet’s postseason release.
And now it checks the final box on its redemption grocery list: a national championship.
“What separates us and has separated us all season long is our team talent, how our guys have played together and for each other all year,” Golden said. “Because of that, we can call each other national champions for the rest of our lives.”
With thousands lining the streets of Gainesville on Monday, viewing amid the pouring rain, a program that should consistently dance among the powerhouses of college basketball ascended to prominence again. A message was broadcast, ringing from the confetti-littered court of the Alamodome to the drenched rooftops back home:
Florida basketball is back.
So there sits Golden in the Alamodome’s press conference room, having built and developed a roster of lost boys and misfit toys.
He’s beside the national championship trophy, with a net draped around his neck. His forehead is coated in a hat that’s turned around — you can’t see what it says on it, but that’s kind of the point. You know.
His media availability has concluded and he’ll wander back into the locker room where he’ll undoubtedly get sprayed with champagne. And as he stands up, it all washes over him.
“National champion?” he asks after an NCAA official refers to him as such while leaving the stage.
“Sounds pretty good.”
Contact Noah White at nwhite@alligator.org. Follow him on X @noahwhite1782.
Noah is a Spring 2025 Assistant Sports Editor and Copy Desk Chief. He's a second-year journalism major who enjoys reading and shamefully rooting for Tennessee sports teams. He is also a Liberty League Women's Soccer expert.
