Monday, April 7th, the 1 seeded Florida Gators and Houston Cougars fought a close battle to the end for the NCAA Men’s Basketball National championship. Which ended up resulting in a Florida Gators win at the last second by a score of 65-63.

The Cougars had the lead for almost the entire game until the last minute. The Gators held the lead for a total of 64 seconds, closing the game out on a defensive stop in the final seconds of the game.

Houston’s Emmanuel Sharp got the ball off a screen with 5 seconds to go, but Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr came up with the biggest defensive play of the game. Making Sharp stop in his shooting motion, drop the ball to avoid a travel, and fight for the loose ball as the time on the game clock expired.

Florida wins March Madness for the first time since 2007 when they won back to back championships led by Head Coach Billy Donovan.

Gators guard Will Richard led the team in scoring with 18 points on 5-10 shooting (4-7 from three), and had 8 rebounds and 2 assists to go along with that as well. Walter Clayton Jr put up 11 points on only 3-10 shooting. However, despite not having the greatest offensive performance, his impact was felt on the defensive side in this game putting up 5 rebounds, a block, a steal, and a crucial stop in the final seconds. Clayton also had 7 assists.

The Gators win their 3rd title overall as a program and Head Coach Todd Golden wins his very first championship as a coach becoming the youngest since NC State’s Jim Valvano to win the NCAA Tournament at 39 years old.

I got some thoughts about the game from viewer Wynsten Williams. “The game was very competitive so that was fun to see.  I chose Florida to win in my bracket so seeing them come back at the last second was cool as well. Overall, I liked the tournament as a whole even though there weren’t many upsets.”