Florida wins the men’s basketball national championship in a nail-biter over Houston

By Kyle Feldscher and Kevin Dotson, CNN

(CNN) — The Florida Gators won the NCAA men’s basketball championship on Monday, defeating the Houston Cougars in a heart-stopping contest that went all the way down to the final play.

The Gators led for a grand total of 64 seconds in the game and trailed by as many as 12 points with 16:24 to go in the second half. Houston’s vaunted defense held Florida and its star guard Walter Clayton Jr. in check for much of the game.

But, as they had so often in this tournament, the Gators came back. Slowly but surely throughout the second half, head coach Todd Golden and his team reeled in the Cougars. As the game got to crunchtime, Florida went on a 15-3 run to come all the way back to tie the game.

It wouldn’t be until the final minute that the Gators took the lead for the first time since the opening minutes of the contest. And, in a battle of Florida’s high-flying offense against Houston’s elite defense, it was the Gators’ making the key defensive plays in the final minutes to seal the championship.

“Our guys knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Didn’t panic when it got tough,” Golden said after the game, in which he became the youngest coach to win a national title since the tournament expanded to 64 teams at 39 years old.

He added, “They did a great job of never getting too high, never getting too low. When we went down 12 in the second half, we stayed the course. We didn’t point fingers, didn’t start to try to make hero plays, gambling defensively. We got rewarded because of that toughness that we displayed.”

With 19 seconds remaining, Houston leisurely took the ball up the court, with Cougars head coach Kelvin Sampson content to hold the ball for the last shot of the game. Point guard Milos Uzan probed the perimeter but couldn’t find an opening and passed to guard LJ Cryer at the top of the key. With Florida guard Will Richard draped all over him, Cryer dished the ball off to Emanuel Sharp with just five seconds left on the clock. Sharp went up for a deep 3-point attempt, but with Clayton flying at him, he pulled the shot down and put the ball on the floor.

Sharp couldn’t touch the ball again without a double-dribble being called and the ball bounced three agonizing times with no one else able to make it to the loose ball to get a shot off.

Gators forward Alex Condon was the first to dive on the loose ball and the final horn sounded before either team could gain control, cementing Florida’s third-ever national championship, and first since 2007.

It’s heartbreak again for the Cougars. Houston was in the school’s seventh Final Four and third national title game. The Cougars are still looking for the program’s first national championship in men’s basketball.

“I told our guys after the game to be disappointed you lost, but do not be disappointed in your effort. Defending Florida is difficult. They got a really, really good team. Coach Golden runs great schemes over there,” Sampson said after the game.

“We guarded ‘em. We held that team to 65 points. Thought if we held Duke to under 70, we’d have a good chance to win. I felt like if we held Florida under 70, we’d have a good chance to win. Saturday we found a way to win. Tonight maybe not so much. Two great teams. Two tough teams. We lost by two points. They made one more play than we did tonight.”

Houston establishes control early

The first half of the contest was an explosion of energy and both teams came out with their hair on fire. Florida used their size to get early buckets against the vaunted Houston defense, but the Cougars soon locked down and forced the Gators into nine turnovers in the first half.

After Richard hit Florida’s first 3-pointer, and then followed that up with two more, the Gators pulled even at 21-21. But the Cougars again used their defense to turn into offense and went on a lighting quick 8-0 run to open up the half’s biggest lead. It was Richard again who helped cut down on that lead with another big 3-pointer as the first half entered the final minutes.

With Clayton being shutout in the first half, Richard put the Gators on his back and kept them into the game. After a tough game on Saturday against Auburn – he scored seven points and shot just 16% from the field – Richard caught fire in the first half against the Cougars. He tallied 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting, including 4-of-6 from long range.

“Houston was guarding us great. They do a great defense out there. Everyone knows them for that. We have multiple guys on this team that can go,” Clayton said after the game. “Tonight was one of those nights with Will. He showed it multiple times this year. Never know whose night it’s going to be, and we showed that as a team.”

The Gators came out of the locker room looking to amp up the physicality and racked up five fouls in the first few minutes of the half, including a technical foul on the team’s bench as frustration boiled over and Houston’s lead continued to grow.

Clayton’s silence became the story for Florida for most of the game. The star guard didn’t attempt a shot between the 5:14 mark of the first half and 14:30 in the second and was completely held in check by Emanuel Sharp, the Houston guard tasked with tracking his every move. Clayton finally scored on some free throws to break his goose egg on the score sheet.

Houston’s run to start the half built the Cougars’ lead to as many as 12 points. The Gators’ shooting woes got worse in the second half as Houston locked down on the defensive end; Florida was shooting just 28.6% from the field in the opening six minutes of the second half.

The Gators make their charge

Things turned around just after that. The Gators went on a 7-0 run in a little more than a minute to cut the lead down to four with about 12 minutes to go. Notably, that run came with Clayton sitting on the bench as his struggles continued.

That 7-0 run ballooned into a 15-3 run over five-and-a-half minutes in the second half, bringing the Gators even after Clayton hit his first field goal of the game and then converted the and-1 free throw to make it 48-48 with about eight minutes to go.

“It was our defense. It was stops. It was finding a way to be able to get some run-outs. As we talked about, we didn’t get a lot of transition, but we were able to break and get a couple,” Golden said. “Walt saw the ball go through the net with some free throws and the and-one layup. I thought that loosened him up a little bit. After that we were starting to get some good stuff, hit some shots, get downhill and get to the foul line. We were able to flip the game and the momentum a little bit.”

The game went back-and-forth in the latter stages as the Cougars held onto their lead and the Gators repeatedly answered back to tie the game. The Cougars had a chance to put some more distance between themselves and the Gators after Ja’Vier Francis rocked the rim with a massive dunk as the clock went under the four-minute mark and then the Cougars got a stop. But star guard LJ Cryer stepped out of bounds as he drove to the rim with 3:24 left, and a big moment passed Houston by.

It was a moment that Houston would come to regret.

Florida tied the game on the next possession as Clayton finally found his shooting touch. Cryer would put his team up again with a jumper, but Richard brought the Gators back even with a pair of free throws. Joseph Tugler put the Cougars back on top by one with two minutes to go with a free throw, but couldn’t stretch the lead by more than that.

The next 90 seconds were a defensive struggle – Clayton missed, Milos Uzan had a 3-pointer blocked by Richard and then Cryer missed another jumper and Tugler turned the ball over after he grabbed the rebound. Alex Condon for the Gators couldn’t put his team in front and Cryer turned the ball over after a steal by Condon with 52 seconds to go.

Florida clamps down and wins a title

The critical moment came a few seconds later. Alijah Martin drew a foul by Tugler, forcing him out of the game after he fouled out. Martin made both his free throws and gave the Gators the lead with 46.5 seconds to go, their first lead since they were up 8-6 with 15:37 left in the first half.

On Houston’s penultimate possession, the Gators got a huge defensive stop from Richard, the team’s best player on the night. Richard got his hand on the ball as Sharp drove to the baseline and the ball bounced off the Cougars’ guard and went out of bounds. It was Florida’s ball.

Denzel Aberdeen hit the second of two free throws after Houston fouled, giving the Cougars one last chance to win or tie the game with 19 seconds to go.

The game’s final play will live long in the memories of the Florida faithful. It ensured that Clayton’s night won’t be remembered for his 3-10 shooting, 11 points or three turnovers.

Instead, the defensive play he made on Sharp – the Cougar who had foiled him for the previous 39 minutes and 55 seconds – on the last play of the game will be what is seared in the minds of Gator fans.

When Sharp caught the ball at the top the key, Clayton was 15 feet or so away. He wasn’t even at the free-throw line. Before Sharp could shoot, Clayton closed down and got a hand in his face, forcing Sharp to drop the ball because he didn’t want his shot to be blocked.

“I’m just going through those last two possessions more than anything else. Incomprehensible in that situation we couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot. We’re down two, and obviously we didn’t need a three,” Sampson said. “But with Emanuel, we were struggling to score the entire second half. We got good looks. But Florida was doing a good job running us off the line and forcing us to score it. We just didn’t do a very good job of finishing some shots.”

The ball fell to the court in no-man’s land and the final seconds ran off the clock.

“I think there was 18 seconds or so on that last possession. We guarded ‘em hard. I saw the ball loose. I was just hoping that we beat them to the ball. When (Alex Condon) got on the floor, I figured it was either going to be a jump ball or we were going to come away with it. Next thing I knew, game was over,” Golden said.

“Just an incredible moment and something I won’t forget.”

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