In the final 2 minutes. Houston: 2 shots attempted. 1. Condon contested, affected, it had no chance. 2. Will blocks a three point attempt from the top of the key. …..and we forced 4 turnovers.
And….we blocked THREE 3 point attempts, and a 4th Walt was as good as a block. A team can go a full season and not block a 3 point attempt. Incredible
I'm sure our rivals will say we had a cakewalk path, even though we took down two #1 seeds in the Final Four. Haters gonna hate. Go Gators!!!
Inpossible Last 11 games, all victories….. Look at this gauntlet…. Bama (twice) Auburn Tennessee Houston UConn Texas AM Texas Tech Missouri
Houston faced the highest seed possible in every game in this tournament. We were only off by one. What a chalky tournament this was.
Saw people earlier in the tourney saying NIL has killed Cinderella. Probably some truth, every big program is loading up every year and doing it by taking the mid-majors best players. It can still happen, but the window for any particular mid major is smaller. Basically they’d have to fly under the radar before their players get poached.
What struck me last night is that we won with defense—something we could never have done last year. We went from 9th defensively in KenPom all the way to 6th because of this game. We were 94th last year. Not only was it the additions of Martin and Chinyelu, but the development of every single player in our rotation, especially the seniors who came back. In the last 14 minutes, we held them to 18 points on 24 possessions, if my count is right. That’s .75 points a possession on the biggest stage when we most needed it, against a top-10 offense. We forced 7 second half turnovers (against 4 committed—and only 1 in the last 16 minutes). In the last 16 minutes, they had more turnovers (7) than made baskets (6).
I'd love to see the headline SOMEWHERE "Gators hold Houston to 10 pts below their average scoring". WE out Houston'd Houston, but all the love is to their defense. WE shut THEM down too. Held them to a lower FG %, and 3pt% we had 7 steals to their 5. and we out rebounded them.
Just like the 06 team did to the vaunted UCLA Bruin's defense. All we heard about was how great their D was all tournament and instead it was a Gator block party and dunk-a-thon.
36-4, after going through the toughest conference in at least a quarter-century. 3-0 going through the toughest conference's toughest-ever tournament. 4-0 coming out of what was metrically the toughest region in the NCAAT. 2-0 in the toughest Final Four in a generation, all 1-seeds. 1-0 against easily the toughest defense in the country. Absolutely amazing what this team accomplished.
The Gators will once again beat another buzzer. Now, at the end of the NCAA season, the Gators will be ranked #1, for the 1st time all year.
We are #1. Houston IMHO is 1A. They were a great team. We fracking beat a hell of a team in as tight of a game as you could ever dream up. Were we fortunate? Yes! But fortune comes to those that earn it, fortune is never randomly given away. GO GATORS!
At least as shown on the box score at the UF site, +/- looks weird. Haugh at +13, Martin +10, Aberdeen +4, Handy 0, everyone else between -3 and -7. I guess I expected Richard to be in plus territory, but of course he was out there holding back the tide when it was going against us. And those are big + numbers for a couple of guys who haven’t been getting a lot talk postgame. Just goes to show how team oriented they are, and like the guys have been saying, somebody’s there to take up the slack. https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/...s/2025/4/8/2025.04.07_Florida_vs._Houston.PDF
