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.
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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