SAN ANTONIO — The Florida Gators won the NCAA men’s basketball National Championship on Monday, defeating the No. 1 Houston Cougars in a nail biter.
Florida trailed by as many as 12 points in the second half but used a 15-3 run to come all the way back to tie the game.
“Our guys knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Didn’t panic when it got tough,” Gators coach Todd Golden said. “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.”
Cougars head coach Kelvin Sampson called timeout and drew up a play with 19.5 seconds remaining. LJ Cryer passed the ball 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 as time ran out.
“I’m just going through those last two possessions more than anything else. Incomprehensible in that situation we couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot. We’re down two, and obviously we didn’t need a three,” Sampson said. “But with Emanuel, we were struggling to score the entire second half. We got good looks. But Florida was doing a good job running us off the line and forcing us to score it. We just didn’t do a very good job of finishing some shots.”
The win was the first national championship for Florida since 2008.
