After Saturday’s Final Four delivered in spades, No. 1 seeds Florida and Houston are set to square off in the NCAA tournament’s national championship game on Monday night.
Florida overcame a nine-point first-half deficit to down Auburn with a dominant second half, while Houston pulled off a truly improbable comeback in the final eight minutes to knock off a Duke team that entered the weekend as the overwhelming favorite to win it all.
How They Got Here
Houston
Where can you even start with what transpired on Saturday night? Down 59-45 with 8:34 remaining, the Coogs looked dead.
Over the next eight minutes, Houston fought just hard enough to give itself a puncher’s chance with under a minute to go. If you can even call it that. Down 67-61 with 0:42 remaining, ESPN’s win probability calculator gave Houston a meager 7.7 percent chance to pull of the comeback.
Then, all hell broke loose. Houston’s full-court press sent Duke into a state of shell shock and the Coogs went on a go-ahead 7-0 run in 15 seconds to take a 68-67 on a pair of J’Wan Roberts free throws with 0:19 remaining.
Houston held Duke to a single made field goal in the last 10:31 of the game. Six days earlier, it held Tennessee to just 15 points in the first half, an all-time low for a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in NCAA tournament history. Defense wins championships and Houston has, bar none, the best defense in college basketball.
Kelvin Sampson is making his first appearance in the national championship game in 32 seasons as a high-level Division I basketball coach. Sampson first brought Oklahoma to the Final Four in 2002, where the Sooners lost in the semifinals as 7-point favorites against a No. 5 seed Indiana team playing Cinderella. He returned 19 years later for the first time with Houston in 2021, but the Coogs were blown out by eventual champion Baylor.
When Sampson took over the Houston program in 2014, it was nationally irrelevant in the AAC and a shell of what it was in the Phi Slamma Jama days. There’s a video of Sampson walking around campus shortly after his hire, exchanging fist bumps for promises from students that they would attend the basketball team’s home opener.
Just over a decade later, Houston is the premier program in the Big 12 and playing in its first national championship game since Hakeem Olajuwon fell short against Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in 1984
Florida
Florida entered the season a complete afterthought in national championship discussions. The Gators were ranked 21st in the preseason AP Poll and entered the season with +6000 odds to win the national championship, in the same ballpark as Rutgers and Xavier teams that missed the NCAA Tournament entirely.
39-year-old Florida coach Todd Golden has gone from finishing under .500 in his maiden voyage with the Gators in 2022 to leading the program to its third national championship game appearance three seasons later. Golden also navigated the Gators through a historically loaded SEC tournament, a feat arguably as difficult as winning the NCAA tournament this season, given how much of a gauntlet the conference was.
Walter Clayton Jr. has emerged as the star of this year’s tournament, earning rightful Kemba Walker comparisons after mentioning how Walker’s 2011 run with UConn inspired him.
Clayton scored 34 points to lead Florida back from an eight-point halftime deficit against Auburn on Saturday. Clayton Jr. also scored 30 points in Florida’s insane comeback against Texas Tech in the Elite 8, thus becoming the first player since Larry Bird in 1979 to score 30+ points in both the Elite 8 and the Final Four (according to ESPN Stats and Info).
Via @ESPNStatsInfo: Walter Clayton Jr. is the first player with back-to-back 30-point games in the Elite Eight and national semifinals since Larry Bird in 1979.
— Jeff Borzello (@jeffborzello) April 6, 2025
Florida has shown throughout the tournament that you can never really count them out. The Gators were down 10 points with just over five minutes remaining against Texas Tech before Clayton Jr., Thomas Haugh and Alijah Martin somehow led them all the way back.
The Gators looked mostly out of it in the first half of their Final Four win over Auburn, but they were completely dominant in the second half. They outscored the Tigers, 41-27, in the frame for what ended up being a six-point win.
Keys To The Game
Florida
The Gators are going to need Clayton Jr. to play like the first-round NBA draft pick he’s hoping to be in April. The last two games have proven that despite all of the surrounding talent, this team goes as Clayton Jr. goes.
Houston showed it can handle the nation’s highest-rated offense in Duke, holding the Blue Devils to just 70 points, so Florida’s No. 2 ranked offense isn’t going to overwhelm the Cougars. This game is going to come down to a few-minute-long stretch in the second half, where Clayton Jr. will either put the bow on his Kemba-like run or Houston will stifle him like it did Duke and Tennessee.
Houston
Cliche, but the Cougars have to play their best defensive game of the season. While the Duke game proved they can suffocate the nation’s top-ranked offense, Duke doesn’t have a scorer as effective as Clayton Jr. is, especially in the biggest moments. If Houston can keep him from going one of his signature second-half runs, it has a great chance of winning this thing.
Championship Game Prediction
Duke may have gotten all the hype as the historically great team going into this weekend, but the truth is Houston was always right there with them in that regard. After Saturday’s win, the Cougars now have a higher KenPom rating than 26 of the last 27 national champions and enter the national championship game on an 18-game winning streak.
Florida’s lethargy at times in this tournament has worried me. The Gators have proven that no lead is safe against them, but Houston is a team that can turn a couple of possessions without a basket into a seven-minute scoring drought. I think the Cougars keep Clayton Jr. human for the most part and win this one 75-70 or in that range.
