NCAA Tournament: Florida rallies to beat Houston for its 3rd national title

By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer

SAN ANTONIO — 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 lock-down intensity 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, but 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 a potential game-winning 3-point attempt in the final seconds.

Clayton ran at him, Sharp 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.

“Our motto is, we all can go,” Clayton said. “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.”

The Gators (36-4) trailed by 12 in the second half. They led this game for a total of 64 seconds, including the last 46 ticks of a game that was in limbo until the final shot that never came.

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 third-year coach Todd Golden bringing the title back to Gainesville, which celebrates 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.

The Cougars (35-5) and Coach Kelvin Sampson were denied their first championship, and ended up in the same spot as those Phi Slama Jama teams from the 1980s – oh-so-close in second place.

This was a defensive brawl, 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 single-handedly outscored Connecticut and Texas Tech down the stretch of March Madness wins, finished with one 3-pointer and, before that, a pair of three-point plays that kept the Gators in striking range.

Then, there was that one defensive stop to put these Gators in the history book, and possibly cement himself as the best basketball player to wear the orange and blue.

“Obviously it’s not a great strategy to fall behind a great team like Houston, but we made some big-time defensive plays down the stretch to win,” Golden said.

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 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-point shot when Clayton ran at him. That left him with no choice but to let the ball go.

Sampson, who designed a defense that held Florida under 70 points for only the second time this season, looked on in shock.

Instead of the 69-year-old becoming the oldest coach to win the title, the 39-year-old Golden becomes the youngest since North Carolina State’s Jim Valvano in 1983 to win it all.

Clayton wasn’t the only one getting frustrated as Houston’s defensive pressure mounted.

The Florida bench got a technical during a quick span of three foul calls in less than a minute. Later in the second half, Houston’s smothering defense baited Rueben Chinyelu into a technical after committing a foul.

But that wasn’t enough.

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 six. 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.

More to come on this story.