With 46 seconds left in the NCAA tournament championship game, top seeds Florida and Houston lined up along the key of the Final Four court, deadlocked at 64 points each. The fact that two top seeds survived until the last day of the tournament wasn’t a major surprise. But the path each team took to arrive in this crucial moment in San Antonio made the tense final minute feel like a basketball miracle.
For Florida, even reaching the Final Four required a flawless comeback. The Gators trailed Texas Tech 75-66 with just under three minutes remaining in regulation and had only a 4.4 percent chance of victory, per ESPN metrics. Florida scored 18 of the game’s final 22 points to stun the Red Raiders, then rallied from a 46-38 halftime deficit to knock out SEC rival Auburn and advance to the championship. Houston’s odds were even slimmer to reach the final — the Cougars trailed Duke, the top overall seed, 64-55 with two minutes and 30 seconds remaining and had just a 2.9 percent chance of victory. The Cougars’ swarming defense and sharpshooting offense, along with an alarming sequence of Duke mental lapses and turnovers, opened the door for a 70-67 Houston win and the most shocking upset possible between two number one seeds.
Once the teams reached the long-awaited final, Florida required further magic just to make the contest close in the second half. Houston raced out to a 42-30 lead just minutes into the second half and threatened to run away with its first men’s basketball championship in blowout fashion, but the Gators’ resilient approach allowed them to gradually pull themselves back within striking range and tie the score with under eight minutes remaining.
The final minutes of the 2024-25 NCAA men’s basketball season were sloppy, thrilling and unpredictable, captivating both diehards decked out in school colors and casual fans who had been eliminated from their bracket pools weeks before. The Gators’ ultimate 65-63 national championship win in San Antonio, and the exhilarating semifinal games that preceded it, finished off a tournament seen as overly predictable and concerning for college basketball’s future with a dramatic and memorable final weekend.
By any metric, this March was less mad than usual in college basketball. Only one double-digit seed made it to the Sweet Sixteen, legendary coach John Calipari’s squad at Arkansas, and all four sections of the 68-team bracket failed to knock off their respective top seed for just the second time in tournament history. With the near-total absence of stunning upsets to top seeds, experts and viewers alike considered name, image and likeness as a likely culprit and the story of the tournament.
If the Final Four unfolded in the fashion of the previous weekends, top overall seed Duke and likely No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg would overwhelm Houston before finishing the deal with a win over the winner of the Florida-Auburn matchup. The trend would have crowned a worthy Duke team with its sixth national championship and made the dominance of the top seeds the lasting legacy of the tournament.
The fireworks came out for the finale. In a matchup of high-powered SEC foes, Florida enjoyed an electric 34-point outing from Clayton and took control in the final minutes, while the Gator defense held Auburn to five points in the final four minutes of regulation for a 79-73 win. Houston’s tenacity (and Duke’s corresponding meltdown) turned the second game of the Final Four doubleheader into an all-time classic and gave a twist ending to Duke’s dominant 2024-25 campaign.
Both teams could be forgiven for letting the emotions of their never-say-die comebacks bleed into the final game and throw off their approach, but the Gators and Cougars brought their trademark physicality from the opening tip (though the teams combined to make only six of their 28 three-point attempts in the first half). The most interesting development was Houston’s lockdown defense of Clayton, who did not score in the first half, but the Gators’ supporting cast and guard Will Richard (18 points, eight rebounds) helped Florida pull within a possession at the halftime break.
Florida’s turnover woes and Clayton’s offensive frustrations did not last forever, but Houston’s 11-2 run to open the second half turned the dominance the Cougars displayed in the first half into a comfortable double-digit lead. The Gators didn’t eliminate their deficit immediately, but their consistent offensive possessions and reduced turnovers chipped away at Houston’s lead. A 6-0 Florida run midway through the half tied the score at 48 points, kicking off a frenzy of clutch shotmaking and exchanged leads. Ultimately, Florida’s defense proved titleworthy, forcing turnovers on each of the Cougars’ final three possessions — while preventing Houston from taking a single shot attempt — to cling to a 65-63 lead and seal the Gators’ third national championship.
College basketball may crown one champion each season, but Florida’s title run ranks among the most impressive of this century. After emerging from the toughest conference in the nation, the SEC, as the conference champion, Florida eliminated the UConn Huskies, the winners of the previous two NCAA championships, to reach the Sweet Sixteen. The following weekend, the Gators survived the two best teams in its region, the fourth-seeded Maryland Terrapins and third-seeded Texas Tech Red Raiders. The Gators capped off the run with victories over two number one seeds, Auburn and Houston, despite halftime deficits in both games. A championship run is a legendary achievement in itself, but one that includes two victories over top seeds, a thriller over a defending back-to-back champion and, in between, a pair of wins against two serious Final Four contenders is another level of greatness.
The 2025 NCAA tournament saved its best for last, leaving a sweet aftertaste for a tournament that seemed to be lacking key March Madness ingredients in its opening weekends. Hopefully, the next tournament will include the bracket-busting upsets that sports fans crave, but as far as the quality of the April slate of games? No notes at all.
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