Article: Florida Versus Houston National Championship Preview

Speaking for myself, mornings like today’s are top tier for waking up to.

 

Difference between UF and Duke: Up 9 with 1:31 to play, it ain't happening for the other team.

 

Definitely part of it. They don't shoot a ton of threes, even though they are far more efficient at the arc than they are in the paint. Gotta force them into the lane, where our bigs can protect the rim.

We are both terrific offensive rebounding teams and good--but not great--defensive rebounding teams. Have to break even on the offensive glass.

Then there is pace. We may not get this to a 70+ possession game, but we can't let it be played in the low 60s (they are 17-1 under 63 possessions). Those games have not gone well for us (UT loss, tight games against UConn, South Carolina, even LSU and Vandy.

 

The reason why is the age-old axiom that defense wins games. But the key metric in this game is the best turnover maker vs the turnover machine. Duke actually only had 7 turnovers against Houston but half occurred in the final minutes. Houston swarms to the ball, they create turnovers while we tend to just turn the ball over for no reason. That's the key stat in tonight's game, can we limit turnovers, can we handle full court press when they swap over to it and can we even make an inbounds pass?

 

This game is going to be a 2OT thriller. Get your meds ready.

 

It's unrealistic to believe our team will suddenly become "turnover aware" between Saturday night and tonight. The thing I appreciate about the NCAA Tournament is the unpredictability of the matchups that suddenly present themselves.

I do not see Houston as being at all concerned about playing us when we play directly into their team strengths. I am not optimistic about our chances. I'd be glad to be mocked for my lily-livered thinking.

 

We were a great championship caliber team top to bottom BEFORE Clayton went on this bender. Houston can claim a good defense all they want but with Clayton shooting lights out the last two games they cant just play defense on him and hope he has an off night. They will be forced to stretch their defense out and bring two guys at Walter which will open up the court for our bigs which have an advantage on the inside or another shooter...Much like the day after eating at Chipotle...its going to be a blow out!

 

Sure they have a good defense. You get this far, that’s no surprise. But, we have played many tough defenses all year, and against tall, rough teams, so it’s going to be what we expect. Auburn clamped us down pretty good in 1st half until they wore out in 2nd. I hope we are aggressive and they foul and the refs call their fouls. The officiating in the tourney has been wildly uneven. Doug Shows reffing a semi-final game?! Is he the best they can get?
Go Gators!

 

Remember the 06 Championship? All we heard all tournament long and going into the finals was how tough UCLA's defense was. Turned out Florida actually had the better defense, blocking their shots all night long and turning the game into a Gator dunk fest the last 5 minutes. Let's hope the Gators come out today and prove we have just as good of a defense, if not better, than Houston and impose our will on them on that side of the ball. I'm expecting a huge defensive effort from Chinny and Martin today. This is why Golden brought them in and I fully expect them to deliver.

 

I am on your same page. UConn, Texas Tech, and Auburn (1st half) all disrupted our offense. Clearly, Houston can do this too. I think we’re going to need some coaching wrinkles, and some outside shots from dudes other than Clayton to fall.

However, I do think our defense is likely equipped to slow Houston’s scoring as well. And if we do get into such a dogfight, I’ll be grateful to have the March Madness Magician on our side in crunch time.

 

We just need to keep it close and make our free throws and we will pull away at the end. Go Gators!

 

I wonder where our defense would have ranked this year if we intentionally slowed the game down to minimize the number of possessions.

 

Florida is the better team but sometimes the better team doesn’t win which is especially true in basketball. It would be easy to say if Clayton has another 30 point game the Gators win but I assure you Houston will key on him and make someone else beat them. Clayton has been a good distributor when taken out of the scoring aspect which is why it’s vital for others to step up in particular Condon and Richard.

Condon and Richard provided valuable defense in the second half against Auburn but more will be needed from them in my opinion. Condon has been playing extremely soft for quite awhile and Richard has looked off recently shooting the three. Condon’s scoring in the last four games has been 1, 7, 6 and 5. Richard’s last two 7 and 6. Sure Haugh has increased his production but that’s one elevating his game while two are dimensioning. If these two can at least bring their offensive game back to the median and Chinyelu squares his body to the basket before shooting, it will be a long night for Houston.

I don’t think Houston can match up with the Gator front court at all. Houston doesn’t get much from their bench. Push the tempo to wear them down, pressure them since teams that pressure don’t like to be pressured, take care of the rock, play with confidence…and the Gators will be the ones cutting down the nets.

 

The metrics, like KenPom, are pace free, so they already take into account the number of possessions.

Using KenPom, this matchup is basically dead even with Florida’s #2 offense (1.29 pts / poss) vs Houston’s #1 defense (0.87 pts / poss), and Florida’s #9 defense (0.92 pts / poss) vs Houston’s #9 offense (1.24 pts / poss).

 

I'm just not sure the "defense wins games/championships" maxim really holds for college hoops, though, or at least it hasn't for national championships. The last national champion who was better defensively than offensively (using KenPom, at least) is 2014 UConn--and that in part is because their offense wasn't very good. Also Louisville in 2013, UConn in 2011, Kansas in 2008, UConn in 2004, Syracuse in 2003. But ever since the game has shifted in tempo and toward analytics based shot selection, offense has really been the key. Lots of teams, like UNC and Nova over the years, have had profiles similar to ours.

IMO, I think you need a good defense (say, top 20 or so), but great offense beats great defense. The last nine national champions have averaged something like being 3-4th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, and the worst offense was 2017 UNC at 9th. Houston us currently at 9th, but their improvement shooting has been a major reason for their success this year.

Would also be interesting to run more numbers on relative rankings in national title games/semis, too. Possibly more variance there.

 

I don't believe that the points per possession would be the same if we focused on defense and slowed the game down. I understand what KenPom is supposed to represent, but it assumes that your points per possession are the same regardless of the number of possessions you have, and i just don't believe that to be the case.

 

Florida needs to get the lead by half-time which bodes well for the Gators' chances, around 35+ points need to be scored by halftime.

Then in the 2nd half, try to get to around 75+ or more to result in the win.

However in both of the 2025 semifinals,
both Auburn (38-46) & Duke (28-34) had about a 6-8 point lead only to fall in the end by their respective foes, Florida & Houston.
So, take that with a grain of salt.

Florida must FINISH the game and not relax or coast.
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Record of Florida when:
Winning: 28-0
Tied: 1-0 {G2-UConn, 31-31}
Losing: 6-4
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When losing at halftime:
Wins (6): {F4-Auburn, 38-46 (W);
at LSU, 31-37; at #22 Miss St, 33-34;
at Vandy, 35-36, at S.Car, 29-36; USF, 39-40};

Losses (4):
{at GA, 35-51,
at #8 Tenn, 21-24,
Mizz(H), 34-50,
at #10 Kentucky, 42-52}
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That is exactly what happened in 2006, ironically enough. We averaged 14+ turnovers a game that year (184th in the country), and had committed 15 against George Mason, 16 against Nova, 12 against Georgetown (at an absurdly slow pace), and 11 apiece in our first two games. Then we only committed 6 against UCLA. Green as so composed and in command that game, even though his shots weren't dropping.

Granted, Houston is light years better than UCLA was defensively, though we don't take care of the ball better than that 06 team did. In any event, I don't expect us to have a 6 turnover game. But we absolutely can turn in a 15 turnover game at a pace like this and against a defense like Houston's. They are going to blitz, trap, hard hedge, and generally just try to put a little of pressure on our ballhandlers, whether that's in ball screen actions or dribble handoffs, and they will help aggressively on our guys who slip and roll to the hoop. What we absolutely cannot do is make bad passes into the middle of the floor. They feast on that kind of stuff. If we are going to win, it will have to be a case where Clayton, Aberdeen, and Martin, in particular, don't get sped up into passes off one foot. If they take care of the ball, make smart passes that get reversed against Houston's doubles and help, we can get lots of weakside looks from the arc and offensive rebounds.

 

It’s a tough question to answer, as teams don’t usually purposely play different speeds, but the standard model is that teams can go fast on offense if they choose, but good defense tends to make opposing offenses slower. This is why even though we play fast, we’re still not averaging 70+ possessions per game. Our defense slows the opposing offenses too much.

In this way, perhaps a team could play better defense if they didn’t shoot as quickly on offense, but that is basically their only avenue to accomplish so.

 

Some common opponents that both Florida & Houston had played (in reverse order):
E8-Tennessee(W), Texas Tech(W, L), Alabama(L) and Auburn (L).

Florida's record against these same opponents:
Tenn (2-1), TT (1-0), AL (2-0), AU (2-0) for a total-W/L of 7-1.

UF: 7-1
Hou: 2-3 (two OT losses to AL & TT!)
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E8: Tennessee (W for Houston, 69-50),
At the end of the 1st half, the Vols trailed 15-34 (horrible start) and played even in the 2nd half (35-35); the damage was done in the 1st half of this game. Houston 69-50 Tennessee (Mar 30, 2025) Game Recap - ESPN

Against Houston, Florida better not fall too far behind like in the road conference games: Georgia in 1st half (trailing 35-51) or in the 2nd half against Tennessee (outscored 23-40 to end the game).

The vols were only 5/29 from behind the arc while the cougars went 9/25 here. UT's point guard Z. Zeiglar was held to only 5 pts/5A when previously he was carrying the vols over many teams (i.e, 18 pts/10A vs Kentucky in a SW16 game and 23 pts/8A vs Florida in the 2025 SEC-T-final).
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B12-Conference:
G2: at Texas Tech (W for Houston, 69-61),
The Red Raiders trailed in both halves (30-33 & 31-36) as the Cougars avenged their only conference loss of the season.
Houston 69-61 Texas Tech (Feb 24, 2025) Game Recap - ESPN

Houston's front-court of Tugler & Roberts (remember these guys' names for the UF/HOU Finals game) combined for 24 pts, 10 reb, 5A, 2 Blks and 2 Stls. In this game, Texas Tech was short handed in their frontcourt which was missing Darrion Williams; however, Toppin had 14 pts/10 reb.
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G1: Texas Tech (L for Houston 81-82 OT),
Early in this game, both Toppin (for Flagrant 2 call) & his coach, Grant McCasland, were ejected. The TT's coach received two straight technicals for arguing this call.

TT had a halftime lead (41-37) but were losing late to Houston before the raiders' Darrion Williams hit a game tying 3-pointer to force overtime.The Cougars eventually fell to the red-raiders and snapping Houston's 33-game home winning streak.

This was similar to Missouri snapping Florida's long home-winning streak in the 2025 season!

Tugler & Roberts combined for 23 pts, 15 reb, etc. The Cougars' point guard, L.J. Cryer, had a team high 22 points.

Texas Tech 82-81 Houston (Feb 1, 2025) Game Recap - ESPN
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Non-Conference:

Alabama (L for Houston 80-85 OT)
Even the mighty Crimson Tide trailed the Cougars 34-36 at halftime. Alabama built up an 8-point lead with about 9 minutes left in the game before Houston managed to tie up the game in regulation. Sounds familiar, right?
Alabama 85-80 Houston (Nov 26, 2024) Box Score - ESPN

In the overtime loss to Alabama, LJ Cryer had a game high 30 points. This time in the front-court, it was Roberts & Javier Francis that combined for 13 pts and only 3 reb.

Tugler who came off the bench had 8 rebounds & 8 block shots against the Tide!

Alabama outrebounded Houston 48-37 with also 20 offensive rebounds to Houstons' 16 offensive boards. This rebounding issue is perhaps the main reason that Coach Kelvin Sampson moved Tugler into their starting line-up.

Hmmm! One of Florida's advantages in the last two seasons has been being one of the top rebounding teams in college basketball.

However, the shot-blocking ability of Tugler should also be one of the primary concerns to Florida when trying to score inside. Players like Chinyelu, Condon, Handlogten need to DUNK the ball rather than trying that soft-xzz baby hook shot inside. I saw Tugler block Duke's 7'2" center when he tried it. So, I hope that the Florida players will be aware of that.
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Auburn (L to Houston, 69-74)
Auburn was trailing 28-33 at halftime. Bruce Pearl must have made some halftime adjustments and the Tigers outscored the COugars in the 2nd half, 46-36.Auburn 74-69 Houston (Nov 9, 2024) Box Score - ESPN

Hopefully, something very similar can happen with Florida's chances against Houston.

Auburn's point guard Pettiford (21 pts, 3A) and their forward Broome (20 pts, 9 reb, 5 Blocks, 3 A, 2 stls) carried the Tigers to their victory over Houston. Broome had a monster game inside as Auburn's defense held Houston in check!

Despite that, Houston still had five players in double figures and were very balanced offensively.

The rebounding battle was even 33 to 33.
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So, those were some of the patterns & trends that I saw in those games.

Good Luck to the Florida Gators!