Florida Wins the Men’s Basketball National Championship in a Nail-Biter Over Houston

Florida defeated Houston 65-63 to take home the school’s third NCAA men’s basketball championship — their first in 18 years. The Gators came back from down double digits to take the lead in the final minute of the game.

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.”

via: CNN

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