College Basketball
Jarring Loss
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
An uncomfortable silence filled Florida’s locker room in the aftermath of the contest between the Gators and Iowa Hawkeyes, save for sniffles and, from center Rueben Chinyelu, an uncontrollable sob.
The Gators, who’d played with a target on their backs all season long as the defending national champions, had suffered a one-point loss to Iowa less than 20 minutes earlier, with defeat having ended their season far sooner than the collective had expected and hoped for, with the team intending to make another deep run in March and into the first weekend in April.
The season-ending defeat came at the hands of an Iowa team that for much of the contest was more physical and carved up a UF defense that entered the NCAA Tournament as one of the nation’s best, and it was difficult for Florida to process what had occurred, as much as they tried, as tears flowed around the room, from players to managers and athletic trainers.
Micah Handlogten sat in his locker, tears filling his eyes – to his credit, he spoke openly on what the team had meant to him, how it felt to see his collegiate career potentially conclude barring a medical hardship waiver from the NCAA, less than an hour earlier.
The team’s reserves, who will have opportunities in the future to make another run in the NCAA Tournament, in Olivier Rioux, Alex Lloyd and CJ Ingram, sat in silence.
Meanwhile, Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Xaivian Lee addressed the media nearby in the postgame press conference, with Haugh’s emotional dismay evident, a far cry from his exuberance nearly a year prior when he threw his hands into the air to celebrate Florida’s national championship.
There was no one in particular to blame for the loss the Gators just got beat, simple as that but more could have been done, and the Gators acknowledged as much.
A critical role player down the stretch, sophomore Isaiah Brown split a pair of free throws with eight seconds and change remaining in regulation, to give the Gators a two-point lead.
After connecting on the second attempt, Iowa beat Florida’s press and found Alvaro Folguieras wide-open in the corner for what would be the go-ahead three-pointer, and the Gators, after a timeout by the Hawkeyes, were unable to get a shot off in the closing seconds as Lee drove right and couldn’t get a clean look at the rim, instead attempting to find Haugh under the basket to no avail.
The loss will stick with the team beyond the weekend, and Brown won’t soon forget his timely misfire at the charity stripe, although he’ll look to use it as fuel to the fire in the years to come.
As Brown spoke, the sobs of Rueben Chinyelu could be heard nearby. The 6-foot-10 center, who finished with zero points and a lone rebound against an undersized Iowa frontcourt, couldn’t hide his devastation, even as associate head coach Carlin Hartman attempted to console the third-year big man who’d played a pivotal role in UF’s run to the national championship a season ago and had blossomed into one of the nation’s best defensive players as an upperclassman.
But Iowa didn’t go away, far from it, instead scoring five-consecutive points to swing the momentum back in its direction.
Post-defeat it’s even tougher, with players not wanting to think about the loss marking a conclusion to their time with a program, though Condon and Haugh in particular knew the questions would come.
Their decisions in the weeks if not days ahead will determine how Florida begins the process of moving on and regrouping for the 2026-27 season.
There were many skeptics from the jump this season, starting with Florida’s season-opening loss to Arizona in Las Vegas, a contest that may have been under-appreciated for its difficulty considering the Wildcats weren’t largely expected to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
UF would suffer defeat three additional times in non-conference play to start the season with a 5-4 record, and many questioned whether or not the Gators would be capable of making another deep run.
Doubters soon turned into believers as the Gators won 21 of their next 23 games to win the Southeastern Conference regular season title and secure a second-consecutive No. 1 seed for the first time in program history.
That’s how Florida’s coaching staff will remember this iteration of the Gators: not for Sunday’s loss in Tampa, but for the team’s ability to overcome adversity, become a close-knit group and play their best brand of basketball into the closing months of the regular Hartman, who has been instrumental in developing Florida’s under-recruited frontcourt into the nation’s best, is hopeful it won’t be the final time he’ll coach the team’s forwards and centers.
Yet he knows the chances are slim to none the group does what they did a season ago and return for another ride. His support for them won’t wane, however, if the frontcourt comes to the determination that moving on is in their best interest.
Exit meetings will occur in the near future, after Florida’s decompressed and processed more of the end result, not that coming to an understanding and eventual acceptance will ease the pain of a jarring defeat.
That’s how this group will be remembered by those within the confines of Florida’s basketball program: as winners, many of whom achieved the ultimate goal of cutting down the nets as the last team standing in the NCAA Tournament a year ago. Doing it once is rare enough hoisting the trophy in back-to-back seasons is an elusive feat experienced by just three programs over the last 53 years.
New Sting Operation
By: Kenneth Harrison
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Recently, Georgia Tech fired men’s basketball head coach Damon Stoudamire
. When he was hired in 2023, I thought it was a great move. He’s a former NBA player and I thought that would lead to getting better recruits at Tech.
A 12-game losing streak to close the season left Georgia Tech with an 11-20 record and a last-place 2-16 mark in the ACC. Stoudamire went 42-55 over three seasons with the Yellow Jackets.
According to Stoudamire’s contract, Georgia Tech is set to owe him $2.6 million over the next two years, a number that is subject to offset if he takes another job.
Athletic director Ryan Alpert was hired in July from Tennessee. He’s in his first-year in Atlanta and he needs to make a move to save this program from becoming irrelevant. Tech has made just one NCAA tournament appearance since 2010.
“On behalf of Georgia Tech, I want to thank Damon for his commitment to the Institute, our men’s basketball program and, most importantly, our student-athletes,” Alpert said in a statement released by the school. “He is highly respected and admired throughout the Georgia Tech community and has been a strong representative of the Institute. We wish him the very best.”
Scott Cross was hired as the new head coach over the weekend. He was the head coach at Troy for seven seasons (2019-26) and he also served as the head coach at Texas-Arlington for 12 years (2006-2018).
Cross has won seven conference championships and 350 games in 19 seasons as a head coach – including five-straight 20-win seasons and back-to-back Sun Belt Conference regular-season and tournament titles at Troy.
“Coach Cross is a proven winner with 350 career victories and seven conference championships on his resume,” Alpert said in a statement. “His combination of experience, success and development of student-athletes, both on and off the court, makes him the perfect person to carry on the proud tradition of Georgia Tech men’s basketball. He is a great fit for our program, the Institute and the Georgia Tech and Atlanta communities.”
Tech deputy executive AD Brent Jones, who came to Tech from Troy, where he served as AD — made him the prime candidate for Alpert.
Cross has shown that he can take over a struggling program and turn them into winners. He has also excelled at developing players. He’s coached three conference players of the year (2025 – Troy’s Tayton Conerway, 2017 – UTA’s Kevin Hervey, 2010 – UTA’s Marquez Haynes) and 25 players that have earned all-conference honors in his 19 seasons as a head coach, including 12 first-team selections. The total includes four first-team all-Sun Belt honorees and six total all-conference selections in his seven seasons at Troy.
When he was hired at Troy, he took over a program that had finished with a losing record in eight of the previous nine seasons and had been to the NCAA Tournament twice since moving up to Division I in 1993.
Tech is currently the worst team in the ACC, so there’s nowhere to go but up.
Same Old Tricks
By: Colin Lacy
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the 2025-26 Georgia Men’s basketball season will be looked at with multiple conflicting feelings.
On one hand, this rendition of Bulldog’s Basketball was the winningest and highest scoring team in program history with a 22-11 record and averaging 89.4 points per game, but on the flip side, Georgia’s season ends with another embarrassing loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in the 8/9 matchup.
Georgia got off to a red hot start out of the gate and carried it thru the first half of the season with a 14-2 thru the first sixteen games of the season.
That said, the start of the questions began in late January when Georgia lost five of the next six games, with the only win in that four-week stretch came at LSU who finished in the cellar of the SEC standings.
So, what do you take away from Georgia hoops in 2025-26? Let’s break it down:
Positive: First and foremost, even with the tough four week stretch, 22 regular season wins are the most ever in the regular season in the 121 seasons on the hardwood in Athens.
With those 22 wins, it earned the Dawgs a second straight NCAA bid for just the fourth time in Georgia history and the first since the 2001 and 2002 postseasons.
The biggest change in the Dawgs program this season was the offensive prowess. Again, this Georgia team could almost score at will. 89.4 points per game were the most in the history of the Dawgs and shattered the old record of the 89-90 squad by 6.7 points per game.
The nickname of “Dunkyard Dawgs” spawned because of the proficiency for rim-rattling dunks. Georgia led the country in percentage of field goals that were dunks at nearly 20% of the buckets were dunks. Somto Cyril led the way of all Division 1 players with 83 regular season dunks.
The Negative: The negative boils down to 2 different portions of the season. From January 24th through the Feburary 14th matchup at Oklahoma, Georgia went 1-5.
At the beginning of the stretch, Georgia was flirting with the top of the SEC and looking to have turned a corner in the history of Georgia Basketball.
It began with three straight losses on the road at Texas and home against Tennessee and Texas A&M.
While disappointing for Georgia fans, its somewhat understandable with all of those teams making the NCAA tournament but compiled with losses at home against rival Florida (who did win the SEC regular season), but the big blow cane with a loss at Oklahoma 94-78 who was near the bottom of the SEC standings.
While you could chalk that stretch as just a tough portion of the schedule, the ending is tough in postseason play for the Dawgs.
In the SEC Championship, Georgia saw the opening matchup with the 15 seed Ole Miss and fell 76-72.
Ok..Ole Miss got hot and the matchup wasn’t the best… Then we get to March Madness.
Georgia was announced as an 8-seed in the tournament and drew a match-up with the 9-seed St. Louis Bilikins.
The Billikens out of the A10 Conference flat out dominated. SLU throttled the Dawgs 102-77 making back-to-back years that Georgia has been embarrassingly knocked out of a first round matchup in the NCAA Tournament. Last season ended with a #8 Gonzaga knocking off the #9 Georgia 89-68.
The last 5 NCAA Tournament appearances have seen the Dawgs bow out in the first round with the last NCAA Tournament win coming back in 2002 as a 3-seed in the West.
It would be ignorant to say that Head Coach Mike White hasn’t elevated the Georgia program back into prominence after missing the tournament altogether from 2015 until 2025, but the tough part to swallow for Georgia fans and supporters is the abysmal performances in the postseason.
In the day and age of the transfer portal, Mike White and company will be scouring the portal to find the next group of Dawgs to help get them over the hump.
Gators Chomp Into Tournament
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Florida enters the 2025-26 NCAA tournament with +650 odds to cut down the nets come the national championship on April 6.
The Gators have the fourth-best odds to win the NCAA Tournament, and in their case repeat as national champions, behind Duke (+300), Michigan (+350) and Arizona (+400).
Florida was selected as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament in the South Region, marking the program’s fourth No. 1 seed selection in program history.
The Gators will make their 24th all-time NCAA Tournament appearance and third in a row under fourth-year head coach Todd Golden, who has led Florida to a 6-1 record in the NCAA Tournament, including last season’s national championship.
UF enters March Madness as victors of 12 of the program’s last 13 games, including an 11-game winning streak in conference play to conclude the regular season, and a 71-63 triumph over Kentucky in the quarterfinal round of the SEC Tournament, before Florida fell to Vanderbilt in the SEC semifinals, 91-74. The Commodores join the Gators in the South region of the NCAA Tournament bracket.
Florida faced two fellow NCAA Tournament No. 1 seeds during the non-conference stretch of its 2025-26 season, falling to then-No. 13-ranked Arizona, 93-87, in its season-opener, and losing to No. 4 Duke, 67-66, on Dec. 2. UF also faced No. 2-seed UConn on Dec. 9, falling to the No. 5-ranked Huskies 77-73.
The Gators ultimately went 9-4 during their arduous non-conference slate before finding their groove in SEC play, going 16-2 against league competition, with ranked wins over No. 18 Georgia (92-77), No. 21 Tennessee (91-67), No. 10 Vanderbilt (98-94), No. 23 Alabama (100-77), No. 25 Kentucky (92-83) and No. 20 Arkansas (111-77).
As Florida’s backcourt made strides during that stretch, its dominance was primarily established through its frontcourt, led by leading scorer Thomas Haugh, forward Alex Condon and center Rueben Chinyelu.
Haugh, Florida’s leading scorer at 17.1 points per game, has been instrumental to the Gators’ success in his first season as a starter. Among his handful of postseason awards, Haugh was named a Second-Team All-American by Sporting News, and a First-Team All-SEC selection by the conference’s coaches and the Associated Press.
Chinyelu, the SEC’s Defensive Player and the Scholar-Athlete of the Year, who also obtained First-Team All-SEC recognition from the AP and Second-Team honors from the league, concluded his second season in Gainesville and his third at the collegiate level averaging a double-double at 11.2 points and a conference-leading 11.5 rebounds, including 7.4 defensive boards, per game.
An All-SEC Second-Team pick by the AP and Third-Team honoree by coaches, Condon has averaged single-season career-highs of 15 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.4 blocks per game in his second campaign as a starter.
Tasked with replacing its stellar trio of guards from the 2024-25 season in Waltet Clayton Jr , Alijah Martin and Will Richard , Florida brought in Boogie Fland and Xauvian Lee via the NCAA transfer portal this past offseason. While it took time for UF’s backcourt to gel, each player finished the regular season averaging double figures per game, with Fland scoring 11.6 points and Lee 11.5 points per matchup.
Additionally, Florida saw junior guard Urban Klavzar grow into a significant role as the Gators’ sixth man. Klavžar knocked down a team-high 2.1 three-point shots per game, averaging 9.7 points per contest, resulting in him winning the SEC’s Sixth Man of the Year award.
Owl Madness
By: Kenneth Harrison
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Kennesaw State Owls men’s basketball team punched their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
They won the Conference USA championship on Saturday, March 14th. KSU (21-13) was the No. 6 seed and they beat No. 4 Louisiana Tech (20-14), 71-60 to claim their first-ever Conference USA title.
The Owls beat No. 3 Western Kentucky and No. 2 Sam Houston to advance to the championship game. They were 10-10 in conference play during the regular season, so this was very surprising.
KSU played their best defensive game of the season against LA Tech, holding them to under 27% from the floor.
The Bulldogs were held to 22-of-72 (26.3%) for the night from the field, and 9-of-37 in the second half for 24.3%. KSU’s defense was even better on the outside, as the Bulldogs made just 2-of-28 (7.1%) from three-point range.
Senior guard Jaden Harris finished with a game-high 18 points on 5-of-9 shooting, including 4-of-6 from three-point range, double the number of made threes that LA Tech had as an entire team.
Freshman forward Amir Taylor had 17 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals and 1 block. Sophomore guard RJ Johnson scored 13 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. Johnson was named the Tournament MVP after his third-straight double-figure scoring game in the tournament
“We played a tough, gritty competitive team in LA Tech. Talvin Hester is one of the best coaches in this league. He does a tremendous job, and we talked before the tournament and said, hey, we hope we meet each other in the championship, and we knew if we met each other, it was going to be a battle, and today was it. I thought we guarded these dudes really well. Defense and rebounding is what carries you in March. We were able to hold their two guards, [DJ] Dudley and [AJ] Bates, to, I think, 0-15 from three. And we knew that was going to be a tremendous challenge, because they are really, really dynamic players, and they go as they go. Our guys stood up to the challenge, and we were able to win the game. A great, great victory for our university, for our community, for our students. And how about our fans? I mean, we painted this place black and gold, man. Kennesaw showed up in a major way,” KSU head coach Antoine Pettway said after the game.
“Truly blessed and truly thankful I get to live out a dream and coach young men like these two sitting up here every single day. We going to keep going, man. We got practice at home on Monday, and we’re getting ready to go play in the NCAA tournament. God is so good. God is so good. This is what we prayed for, this is what we dreamed about.”
This was Kennesaw State’s second-ever trip to March Madness in the school’s Division I era, and first since the 2023-24 season.
They were selected as the No. 14 seed in the West Region. They played the No. 3 Gonzaga Bulldogs (30-3) at the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, about 350 miles away from Gonzaga’s campus in Spokane, Washington. This is Gonzaga’s 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance and 28th overall.
Kennesaw State built an early lead on the Bulldogs but Gonzaga ended the first half on a 10-0 run to head into the locker room with a six point advantage.
Gonzaga would build a double digit lead in the second half and stage off a late comeback attempt by the Owls to eliminate KSU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 73-64.
Bad Bees
By: Kenneth Harrison
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Georgia Tech used to be one of the better Men’s basketball programs in the ACC in the 80’s and 90’s. They were still pretty good in the early 2000’s. They advanced to the Final Four in 2004 and played in the national championship game. They have been pretty inconsistent since then.
The Yellow Jackets hired former NBA player Damon Stoudamire as head coach in March of 2023. He was a consensus first-team All-American in 1995 when he played for Arizona.
Stoudamire was the seventh pick by the Toronto Raptors in the legendary 1996 NBA Draft. He was also named NBA Rookie of the Year.
His resume as a player is impressive. As a coach, not so much. He was the head coach at University of the Pacific from 2016-2021. His overall record was 71-77. In his five seasons with the Tigers, he had one winning season.
I’m not sure why Tech hired him with that as his only head coaching experience. His record since taking over in Atlanta is 42-48.
In the 2023-24 season, they finished 14-18. They did show some promise that first year by beating Duke and North Carolina, who were both ranked in the top ten.
Last season they finished 17-17. Not great but the team did improve. They are currently 11-13 and 2-9 in ACC play. Tech is currently on a five-game losing streak and they have not won a game since January 17th.
They played their last two games on the road against Cal and Stanford. Isn’t it ridiculous that those are conference games?
They lost 95-72 against the Cardinal, who ended their five-game losing streak. Ebuka Okorie scored a career high 40 points to lead Stanford.
Freshman guard Akai Fleming lead the Yellow Jackets with 19 points. This was his 12th game in double-figures.
Coach Stoudamire spoke about struggling in the second half.
“I just didn’t think we executed well on either end of the floor in the second half. Defensively, we didn’t do a good job of containing (Ebuka) Okorie. We know he’s the best player on the floor. So, you’ve got to account for him. We didn’t do a great job on that end, and it makes it hard when he hits three as well. He made free throws as well. He is great at drawing fouls, and he did that all game long. He just put so much pressure on us. Again, it was just the most disappointing thing about us on the defensive end was that we did not do a good job of containing him and giving the ball handler cushion to know where his help was. These are things that, you know, you go over, and you know, we didn’t have any game carryover in the second half. In terms of, you know, our shooting, you know, it speaks for itself. We shot 51 in the first half. and we shot 35 in the second, you know, so that’s a recipe for disaster when you can’t get stops, you know, then you’re not shooting the ball well.”
There are seven regular season games left, The remaining games are Wake Forest, at Notre Dame, #18 Virginia, at #24 Louisville, Florida State, Cal and at #20 Clemson.
I’ll Be Back
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Alex Condon will return to Florida for his junior season.
The Florida men’s basketball program’s roster for the 2025-26 season, as of today, is essentially complete: with one starting roster spot available for a development-focused player.
What started out as a slow transfer portal turned into a masterclass by Florida’s newly equipped coaching staff.
It’s readily apparent the Gators have the pieces in place to make a second run for a national championship under head coach Todd Golden, mirroring his predecessor Billy Donovan. As difficult of a feat as it is to accomplish, they are once again a serious contender coming off a National Championship.
As for replacing Walter Clayton Jr., Florida brought in a mid-major transfer, Princeton’s Xaivian Lee, giving the Gators a crafty and explosive guard who excels with the ball in his hands.
Lee has an impressive first step, with the speed to blow by his defender and the court vision to attempt a high-percentage look or find the open man when the defense collapses.
While some may question his ability to succeed at a similar rate in the nation’s toughest conference, Lee consistently dominated Power Four competition when given the opportunity, and he stood out in 2024 at the G League Combine. He proved that he can play and succeed against the country’s best.
Continuing to target the backcourt, Florida keyed in on Ohio University transfer AJ Brown, who will presumably fill a role similar to Will Richard’s: a lights-out shooter from long-range who provides impressive defense and the ability to battle on the boards in the low post.
Brown is projected to begin the season as Florida’s 6th man, followed by center Micah Handlogten, giving the Gators a polished, experienced scorer in the second unit.
Although Brown may not start from the jump in Gainesville, the Gators intend to spend the summer evaluating their rotation. It’s possible Thomas Haugh returns to a bench role, with Brown sliding into the three spot for the Gators.
Only time will tell how Brown fits into UF’s rotation, though it’s in my opinion an impressive addition, one which will benefit his younger brother, Isaiah Brown, too.
Speaking of Isaiah, anyone who is underestimating the Orlando native: it would not be a surprise to see Isaiah Brown play a notably increased role during his sophomore season.
He’s an impressive outside scorer and he’s physical, yet quick enough to defend one through three although he did not display his full potential last season. The coaching staff thinks highly of Isaiah Brown, and that extra regard and attention goes a long way.
Meanwhile, Florida prepared contingency in late April. The Gators’ coaching staff recruited and acquired one of the nation’s top freshmen during 2024-25.
You know, the one who pulled out of the 2025 NBA Draft and will return to college for one more year, but not at Arkansas.
As critical as retention was, it’s the additions that may put Florida firmly back in contention for a title, and not just via the transfer.
After retaining, reconstructing, and retooling, the Gators managed the previous two months as well as any program could hope for, and expectations will undoubtedly be enormous.
Florida should be a preseason top 10, if not a top five team, in the months ahead, and it’s because the Gators are coming off their third national championship in program history AND Florida dominated this spring.
The schedule will be daunting throughout the upcoming season. The non-conference slate should be more challenging than it was during the 2024-25 campaign, and Southeastern Conference play will consistently challenge each of the league’s 16 member schools.
If the Gators stay healthy they will handle the weight of expectation. Perhaps if they keep their underdog mentality from last season, Florida will contend for a second-straight national championship following Condon’s decision to return to Florida.
The Next Chomp?
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Florida Gators are the national champion after a 65-63 win over Houston.
At a glance, it looks like everyone just left a time machine.
A 30-something former college point guard with one stopover as a mid-major coach takes over and eventually puts together a deep, balanced roster that’s remarkably efficient on both ends of the floor. A title follows.
Florida forced four turnovers in the last two minutes. The title was won on a stop and a scramble for a loose ball as time ran out. The defense displayed dominance during the most critical point in the game.
The two-point final margin? It matched the Gators’ largest lead of the night. Florida scored the second-fewest points they had all year in the championship game. Their comeback (a third in a row in this event) tied for the third-largest comeback in men’s championship game history.
This version of Florida does have some conspicuous differences from the one Billy Donovan first led to the pinnacle in 2006, nine years after arriving from Marshall.
Today’s head coach obsesses over data and analytics and unflinchingly runs a system with origins in the Ivy League in the most obsessively competitive athletic conference in the country.
Walter Clayton Jr., the inaugural first-team All-American in program history and the Final Four Most Outstanding Player — was a four-star football prospect who started at Iona as a good passer that was “a little bit heavy,” in the estimation of his coach, Rick Pitino.
All things considered, cutting the net would’ve been easier. This NCAA Tournament has made one thing abundantly clear: There is no Venn diagram, ever, in which “easy” and Walter Clayton Jr.’s name overlap.
How does anyone explain a former zero-star recruit winning most outstanding player in the toughest Final Four of all time? So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that as Clayton ascended a ladder , scissors in hand, he went to snip at a championship net … only to realize he didn’t need to.
Twenty minutes later, Clayton made a beeline to celebrate with the people he’d come to Florida with in the first place. Kindly requesting no questions or other distractions.
This group raised the trophy after conquering the most loaded Final Four in history, and the Gators are another unified team assuring that they will be among the favorites to do so again next spring.
Florida will lose very important cogs like Clayton, Martin, and two assistants. Golden’s de facto offensive and defensive coordinators accepted head coaching jobs elsewhere.
Florida still might be the preseason No. 1 and should be among the top contenders for the 2026 national title.
Finally, the ambition of Coach Golden has never been terribly difficult to measure, which means the Billy Donovan comparisons may run even deeper.
Florida is the first and only program to win three National Championships in both football and basketball.
Championship Chomp
By: Michael Spiers
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Florida Gators are national champs, and they absolutely earned it.
This wasn’t one of those lucky runs or feel-good Cinderella stories. Florida took the hard road, the kind that leaves no doubt about who deserves the trophy.
They battled through the SEC, the toughest conference college basketball has ever seen, which somehow managed to send 14 teams to the NCAA Tournament.
Then they won the conference tourney. And from there? They tore through a stacked NCAA bracket that saw all four No. 1 seeds make the Final Four. That almost never happens.
To even reach the championship game, the Gators had to take down UConn, a team that had won back-to-back national titles.
Then they found themselves down 12 points in the second half against Houston, a team that led for most of the game. But Florida didn’t blink. They chipped away at the lead, made big-time plays down the stretch, and pulled off a gutsy 65-63 win to claim their third national title.
It wasn’t always pretty, but it was gritty, and that fits this team perfectly.
Florida didn’t get here by stacking up five-star freshmen. They built this roster with savvy transfers—guys who had already proven themselves elsewhere.
Walter Clayton Jr. started at Iona. Alijah Martin played most of his college career at Florida Atlantic. Will Richard came over from Belmont. None of them were top 100 high school recruits, but together, they formed one of the best and most well-rounded squads in the country.
Clayton was a star all tournament long. Martin brought leadership and toughness from his deep run with FAU last year. Richard, who scored the most in the title game, showed up big when it mattered most. These weren’t one-and-done prospects. They were veterans who knew how to win.
Head coach Todd Golden deserves a lot of credit for putting it all together. In just his third year with the Gators, he’s built a team that thrives in today’s transfer-heavy landscape.
That said, his season wasn’t without controversy. Golden was the subject of a Title IX complaint before the season started, involving accusations of stalking and harassment.
The university later said there was no evidence to support the claims and closed the investigation in January. Golden hasn’t said much about it, and neither has the school, but after this season it’s likely his next big headline will be about a contract extension.
Now, as impressive as Florida’s run was, it also says something bigger about where college basketball is heading.
This year’s tournament? Not exactly the wild ride we’ve come to expect. No buzzer-beater upsets. No Cinderella crashing the party. The lowest seed in the Sweet 16 was a No. 10 from, you guessed it, the SEC. It was a tournament full of top dogs, and Florida, with its battle-hardened group of transfers, came out on top.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I firmly believe players should have the freedom to move, get paid, and find the best spot for themselves. It’s just… different.
The charm of March Madness has always been its unpredictability, the chance to watch tiny schools knock off the giants. But when all the best mid-major talent ends up at places like Florida, those magical moments might become a lot rarer.
Still, none of that is Florida’s fault. They just played the hand they were dealt better than anyone else. They didn’t just adapt to the new world of college hoops. They owned it. And now they’ve got another championship banner to show for it.
So, while this year’s tournament might’ve been a little short on the “madness,” it was full of high-level basketball.
Florida’s path was as tough as it gets, and they passed every test. Like it or not, this is what winning in college basketball looks like now. And Florida? They’ve set the standard.
The Path
By: Robert Craft
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Just because there’s no Cinderella, doesn’t mean there won’t be a storybook ending.
In 2025, the crown will go to a No. 1 seed, as all four top dogs — Auburn, Duke, Florida and Houston — advance to the Final Four for the second time in tournament history.
The Blue Devils face the Cougars, while the Tigers take on the Gators, both in San Antonio on April 5th.
The dominance of the SEC has loomed over March, with the conference breaking one record 14 NCAA Tournament bids, then breaking another with seven teams in the Sweet 16. The SEC is also the first conference to have four schools in the regional finals.
Two SEC teams remain, and they’ll meet in one semifinal, while an ACC and Big 12 matchup awaits us on the other side of the bracket.
Florida-Auburn tips at 6:09 p.m. ET, and Duke-Houston follows at 8:49 p.m. ET, both on CBS.
As far as the betting odds go, Duke is the early favorite at -110.
In case you’re new to the madness, let’s review the few remaining teams.
Auburn had three slow starts in their first three games. Against No. 5-seeded Michigan (Sweet 16), the Tigers clawed back from a nine-point deficit in the second half. Auburn closed the game on a remarkable 39-17 run en route to the Elite Eight.
Once there against Michigan State, the Tigers flipped the script, putting together a complete game to end Tom Izzo and the Spartans’ season while surviving a major scare in the process.
Senior forward Johni Broome, the SEC player of the year, went down with an elbow injury with 10:37 left to play and the Tigers leading by 10. He walked off the court shaking his head as he headed to the locker room, but returned five minutes later after his X-ray came back negative, per CBS.
In very March fashion, the Florida Gators almost lost before the Final Four. Florida had to erase a double-digit second-half deficit against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight due to Walter Clayton Jr.’s clutch shot-making.
The 6-foot-3 senior guard finished with 30 points — eight of them in the final 107 seconds — to send the Gators to their first Final Four since 2014. Clayton leads the team in both points (18.1) and assists (4.2).
“There’s not another player in America you would rather have right now than Walter Clayton with the ball in his hands in a big-time moment,” Florida coach Todd Golden said after the Elite Eight comeback.
The Duke Blue Devils walked into the NCAA Tournament fresh off an ACC tournament victory, which they conquered without their leader Cooper Flagg, who sat out of the competition with an ankle injury.
Since Flagg’s return for the first round, Duke has won comfortably for the most part. It bested three of their four opponents by double digits, crushing Mount Saint Mary’s in the first round by 44 points. The team then dialed up its top five defense in the Elite Eight against Alabama.
While Flagg leads the team in points (18.9), rebounds (7.5), assists (4.2) and steals (1.4), it was the team’s defense that carried the Blue Devils to ACC regular-season and tournament titles- in addition to the No. 1 ranking and the No. 1 seed.
It is Duke’s first Final Four under coach Jon Scheyer and the program’s 18th overall. The Blue Devils last reached the Final Four in 2022.
Houston had to get past Tennessee. It did so in the Elite Eight, with one of the most impressive defensive performances in NCAA Tournament history.
The Big 12 Conference champions contained the Vols to just 28.8 percent from the field, forced 14 straight missed 3-point attempts to open the game and (yes, you’re about to read this right) held Tennessee to only 15 points in the first half. It marked the lowest scoring first half by a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in NCAA Tournament history.
For the Cougars, performances like this are typical. Houston has not lost a road game this entire season. Led by coach Kelvin Sampson, the program’s holy trinity of defense, rebounding and ball management, always travel well and it’s been well utilized on Houston’s path to the Final Four. Houston had a tough schedule in the Midwest region, knocking off No. 2-seeded Tennessee (69-50), No. 4-seeded Purdue (62-60), No. 8-seeded Gonzaga (81-76) and No. 16-seeded SIU Edwardsville (78-40).
In Sampson’s third Final Four of his career, his Cougars’ reward is Duke, and for the first time in a long time, they’re the underdogs.
