SAN ANTONIO – The circumstances had been laid out quite succinctly and, frankly, also profanely. Florida was getting dominated inside and trailed Saturday night’s NCAA Tournament semifinal against Auburn by eight points at halftime. Both Gators coach Todd Golden and especially Carlin Hartman, the associate head coach charged with overseeing the “bigs,” had lit into the UF front court for their passive play. 

The message was clear: Bow up or bow out. 

Senior point guard Walter Clayton Jr. was the first to leave the locker room, but rather than making his way back to the floor, he took a couple steps to his left and waited, one by one, for each UF center and forward to emerge, eventually huddling with the group. Hartman had masterfully played the bad cop role. Clayton went the other way. 

“I told ’em I loved ’em and that they’d been doing a great job for us all year,” Clayton recounted. “I saw some looks in their faces and said, ‘Don’t be nervous. We’re good, we’re gonna get this.’ That was pretty much it.”

Yeah, but Clayton glossed over the best part. The part about him scoring 20 of his career-high 34 points in the second half – including more dagger, late-game buckets – to lead a rally from nine points down and fashion a 79-73 victory over the Tigers that put the Gators in their first NCAA Tournament championship game since 2007, the second of the program’s historic back-to-back titles under Billy Donovan.

Fourth-ranked UF (35-4) will play second-ranked Houston (35-4) for the big hardware Monday night. The Cougars, with the nation’s top-rated defense, shocked NCAA Player of the Year Cooper Flagg and No. 1 Duke in Saturday’s late semifinal, rallying from nine down with just over two minutes to play for an improbable 70-67 victory that ended the Blue Devils’ 15-game win streak.

A date with history awaits.

“The heart and toughness, both physically and mentally, these guys showed was incredible,” said Golden, who has resurrected UF basketball in just three seasons since arriving from the University of San Francisco in 2022. “We’re alive, man. We’re playing for the national championship Monday night.” 

And Clayton will lead them. On the heels of his 30-point performance in last week’s West Region final against Texas Tech, the only first-team All-American in UF history hit 11 of his 18 field-goal attempts, went 5-for-8 from the 3-point arc and 7-for-7 from free-throw line. In the second half, those numbers were six of nine, 3-for-4 and 5-for-5 in leading the Gators to their 11th consecutive win and 17th over the previous 18. 

Clayton, the 6-foot-3 senior from Lake Wales, Florida, became the first player to score at least 30 points in a national semifinal since (get this) Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony in 2003 and the first to tally at least 30 points in a regional final and national semifinal back-to-back since (GET THIS!) Indiana State’s Larry Bird in 1979.

 

Most recent players with back-to-back 30+ point games in the Elite 8 or later:

Walter Clayton Jr.

Larry Bird (1979) pic.twitter.com/OVUUldYsWi

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) April 6, 2025

Oh, and he also talks his teammates off the ledge, when needed. 

Is there anything this sharp-shooting wunderkind can’t do? 

“He’s just special,” senior guard Will Richard said. 

Clayton’s two free throws with 9.6 seconds left put the Gators up by six, but he scored eight other points, including one of his trademark circus fall-away 3-balls, over the final four-plus minutes to put distance between his team and Southeastern Conference regular-season champion Tigers (32-6). The Florida lead was three with just over 90 seconds to go, when Clayton attacked the Auburn defense, drew a foul and finished a layup through contact. His free throw made it a six-point game with 1:33 to go and the Gators closed from there. 

 

WALTER CLAYTON JR. IS NOT HUMAN.#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/KTJN8TMaYB

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) April 6, 2025

“All things kind of equal, Clayton was the difference,” said Tigers coach Bruce Pearl, who saw a similar performance from the UF star in February when he scored 19 points, hit four 3s and dished a career-high nine assists in a 90-81 road upset of then No. 1 Auburn. “He was just flat-out the difference. We couldn’t contain him down on that end.”

They were otherwise doing well enough, however, to be in control at halftime. Through the first 20 minutes, the Gators showed next to no resistance defending the post, with first-team All-America forward Johni Broome, the 6-foot-10, 240-pounder, backing UF defenders down and getting anywhere he wanted on the block on the way to 12 first-half points. Forward Chad Baker-Mazara had eight. 

Up 46-38 at the break, Auburn had pummeled its way to 26 points in the paint, while hitting 13 of its 18 shots (72.2%) from inside the 3-point line. 

“We did not have an answer for their physicality in the paint,” Golden said. 

The Gators were doing nothing they were coached to do, relative to guarding the left-handed Broome and trying to force him away from his strong hand. The four UF bigs – Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu, Thomas Haugh and Micah Handlogtren – had combined for eight points, 10 rebounds and played soft through the first 20. 

Hartman had to say his piece.

“They know I love them, but the bottom line, this was a win-or-go-home scenario and we were allowing them to dictate the terms,” Hartman said. “I went to the bigs and – I cussed a lot – and told each, ‘They’re challenging your manhood!’ It was unacceptable and if we didn’t turn it around the game was going to get away from us. We had a choice to make.”

He went at the 6-foot-11, 255-pound Chinyelu particularly hard.

“I told Rueben he was our biggest, strongest, most athletic guy,” Hartman said. “When was it going to show up?”

Hartman’s words were real. 

So were Clayton’s moments later. 

“He gave us a pep talk,” Haugh said. 

“Our PG stepped in and said he trusted us, that he’d been rolling with us all year,” Chinyelu said. “It just showed the love and belief we have for each other. The trust. Boom. Our point guard said, ‘Let’s go!’ “

And they went, all right, but not right away. The Tigers worked their lead out to nine, 49-40, with 18 minutes to go when the Gators’ senior stalwarts stepped up in unison.

 

First came an old-time 3-point play by Richard (7 points, 6 rebounds) off an offensive rebound. Then Clayton pulled up and bombed a 3 in transition. A minute later, Alijah Martin (17 points, 3 rebounds) threw in a 3 to tie the game. Clayton’s driving layup on UF’s next possession gave the Gators, up 51-49, a run of 11 straight and their first lead since just under nine minutes remained in the first half. 

“For us, it starts on the perimeter – Walt, Will and Alijah, our senior leaders – are guys who have been through the fire before,” Golden said. “They’re great players with really, really high levels of confidence and they just kind of breathe it into the rest of the team.”

On this night, their breath touched the UF bigs, who collectively played a completely different – far more aggressive – second half. Condon, Chinyelu, Haugh and Handlogten all took turns in limiting Broome, who appeared exhausted late in his 34 minutes, to just one of four from the floor and 1-for-5 from the free-throw line, while helping cordon off the 2-point area. The Tigers made just four of 14 shots (35.7 percent, half of what they shot in the opening period) inside the 3-point line after halftime.

After Clayton’s go-ahead basket, the teams combined for seven lead changes and two ties over the next nine-plus minutes. A drive and lob from Broome to center Dylan Cardwell (9 points, 8 rebounds) ended in a dunk and had the Tigers up 63-62 inside seven minutes to go. At UF’s end, Haugh attacked the right side of the lane for a go-ahead layup at 6:29.

The Gators never trailed again.

A steal and run-out slam by Martin made it a 3-point lead. Barely a minute later, Clayton’s 3-pointer off a dribble-handoff from Haugh had UF up by four. The margin was back to three, 71-68, inside two minutes when Clayton converted his “and-1” in traffic, and 50 seconds later Haugh threw in a reverse layup to go up by eight, 76-68, with 37.9 remaining.

Auburn played foul ball from there and Florida helped by missing three of its next four free throws, including two by Haugh (81% on the season) with 12.7 seconds left and the lead down to four. Chinyelu, though, grabbed Haugh’s miss and funneled the ball to Clayton, whose was fouled and knocked down his two with less than 10 to go to closed out the Tigers and complete an individual Final Four performance for the ages.

 

Florida is one win away from a title.

Todd Golden and Walter Clayton Jr. join @tracywolfson after an incredible victory. pic.twitter.com/t7SUWeePdy

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) April 6, 2025

In UF’s eight postseason games (3 wins in the SEC Tournament, 5 wins in the NCAA Tournament), Clayton has averaged 23.1 points, shot 49.1% from the floor, hit 49.2% of his 63 3-point attempts and 88% of his 52 free throws. 

Repeat: He’s doing things the college game hasn’t seen since Larry Bird.

“I guess you could say I really haven’t had time to reflect on what I’ve been doing,” Clayton said. “I’ve just been focused on winning games with these guys.”

There will be time to reflect later. 

The Gators have one more game to play. College basketball’s best offensive player against college basketball’s best defense. For everything. With their do-everything guy, well, doing it all. 

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu.