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Myron Medcalf
SAN ANTONIO — When Walter Clayton Jr. decided to withdraw from the NBA draft last year, he posted his announcement with two words on Instagram: “1 more.”
Last year in his first season with the Florida Gators, the team went 24-12. The Gators had a few big wins — notably over then-No. 10 Kentucky in January and in the SEC tournament, where they reached the championship game — but ended the season with a first-round upset to 10-seed Colorado.
Clayton had unfinished business. And when he showed up for his junior season at Florida, something was different.
As he entered the lobby of a Birmingham, Alabama, hotel for SEC media day, he had clearly packed on more muscle during an arduous offseason. He’d also chopped off his braids, a new style for the star who also had a new role and a new position.
But Clayton’s biggest change was not visible that day, though it was there.
“We took a huge step this summer, bettering our games,” Clayton said then. “Everybody has been in the gym. I think the team is a lot more focused now. I think it’s going to be a great year.”
And it was, perhaps greater than anything Clayton and the Gators could have imagined then. Despite a subpar offensive performance by Clayton in the national title game (he scored 11 points, by far his NCAA tournament low), the Gators cut down the nets at the Alamodome after capturing the program’s third national championship and its first in 18 years.
After the win, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, Clayton — whose 11 points all came in the second half and included a 3-pointer that tied the game at 60 — and his teammates thought about the road they’d traveled to reach this moment.
It started back in May, when Clayton withdrew from the draft — and changed the trajectory of Florida’s 2024-25 season. That choice remains the most significant domino that led this team to the title it won on Monday night in San Antonio.
This is the story of Florida’s run to the national championship, from the beginning all the way through Monday night’s conclusion.
CLAYTON ALWAYS HAD big basketball dreams.
Even as SEC schools like Florida and Georgia tried to attract him to their campuses with football scholarships, he wouldn’t relent. He quit football as a sophomore because he so badly wanted to be a basketball star, but the pandemic had robbed him of a chance to play on the summer circuit and earn high-major offers. At Iona, however, Rick Pitino’s guidance helped Clayton win MAAC Player of the Year in 2023 before he darted into the transfer portal and back home to play at Florida. He was an All-SEC second-team selection last season with real NBA aspirations, but he ultimately decided his dreams needed more time to cook in Gainesville, so he withdrew from the draft.
His decision to return served his ambitions on a few levels. Clayton wanted more time with his 1-year-old daughter, Leilani, who lives near Gainesville. But he also came back to get better and raise his draft stock.
“I think for him, going to get NBA workouts last spring and summer, I think it was really, really big for him,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “To be able to get some good feedback from six or seven NBA teams — it really motivated him.”
To achieve his NBA dreams, however, Clayton also knew he’d need more opportunities to prove he could be a playmaker at the next level. Golden had a solution: He moved Clayton to point guard.
“Watching him play pickup, pushing the ball in transition, he showed to us and proved to us that he could do that, become the primary ball handler and lead the team,” Golden said. “I think he’s done an incredible job of getting himself in great shape. He works on his game a ton. Having someone that’s such an elite threat to score with the ball in his hands at all times obviously makes everybody else so dangerous as well.”
Clayton’s renewed motivation upon his return inspired his teammates, as well. As soon as the offseason, after workouts with Clayton at his new position and the seamless integration of Florida Atlantic star Alijah Martin, the Gators had visions of a bright future. They knew they had a chance to be good. And they were determined to do everything they could to get better.
To create a more unified group, Victor Lopez, the team’s strength and conditioning coach, turned to his military roots. Lopez, a former member of the United States Marines who served in Iraq, met with the leaders who ran the Marines ROTC office on campus and asked them to put the Gators through military-style workouts.
At 6 a.m. last summer in the dew-soaked grass of Gainesville, the Gators did bear-crawls, carried weights across fields, flipped tires and completed situps with large logs sitting on their chests.
“It was pretty simple: It was to see if guys would break under stress,” Lopez said.
But Lopez had other goals. He purposely paired some of the toughest players on his team with players who had not yet developed a similar resilience. The Gators left those summer drills with a new feeling: They also knew they’d never quit.
“It was hard,” Rueben Chinyelu said. “But it’s just something that kept us going. We were having fun while doing it, but we were also competing. We learned who wanted to compete. Who has that competitive spirit, who wants to give up, who doesn’t want to give up, who wants to take care of things even when it’s difficult … Just being able to do that helped us learn more about each other and know what we can do.”
THOUGH THE PLAYERS were confident, outside, there were more questions than answers about Florida entering the season.
“A lot of questions were asked last summer and this fall if we would have enough ballhandling on this team, enough playmaking,” Golden said.
As a result of those doubts, the Gators were picked to finish sixth in the SEC’s preseason poll, behind Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas A&M. But their fast start to the season suggested the Gators might be a contender in 2024-25.
Although the Gators didn’t play a tough nonconference schedule (ranked 238th in the country, according to KenPom), they were dominant — and undefeated — in November and December. Entering a Dec. 17 matchup against North Carolina in the Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, the Gators had defeated their first 10 opponents of the season by an average of 21.1 points per game. But that slate had also featured seven sub-100 KenPom opponents. North Carolina, which had struggled against one of the tougher nonconference slates in the country, represented Florida’s toughest test of the season to date.
That night, the Spectrum Center sounded like the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, with thousands of Tar Heels fans in the building. The Gators went up early, but the Tar Heels bounced back: With 7:50 to go, the Tar Heels took a two-point lead on Seth Trimble‘s three-point play.
The Gators didn’t panic — they regained control of the game and held on to win 90-84 after a pair of three-point plays by Clayton in the final minutes.
The adversity they had anticipated this season had finally arrived — and they had managed to fight through it.
“That’s when we knew,” Clayton said, “that we belonged.”
The pundits took notice, too. Undefeated and with a new top-10 ranking, the Gators had changed their fortunes and attracted national buzz.
With Clayton (39% from the 3-point line) running the show, Florida blossomed into one of the top offensive units in the country. Per Synergy Sports data, Florida — No. 2 in adjusted offensive efficiency on KenPom — is rated as an “excellent” team in pick-and-roll situations. Clayton had emerged as an SEC Player of the Year contender, too. It was clear that his supporting cast could compete with any group in the country.
Yet, those early highs also had another effect: The Gators had, admittedly, lost some of their edge.
“Obviously, we went undefeated in nonconference,” Clayton said. “Whenever you lose a game, some teams bounce back differently.”
In their first SEC matchup, the Gators ran into a Kentucky squad that was just as comfortable in high-scoring affairs as they were. Mark Pope’s offensive system had already spawned four 100-point efforts by the time the Wildcats hosted Florida at Rupp Arena on Jan. 4.
That day, the Gators produced 139 points per 100 possessions, an incredible scoring rate. But Kentucky (147 points per 100 possessions) was even better. In its first loss of the year, Florida had been bested at its own game.
“We started off not the way we wanted to,” Condon said about the 106-100 loss at Kentucky. “They shot the lights out of it.”
HUMBLED, THE GATORS had to regroup. They were a team that had not tasted defeat in November and December and had entered the SEC schedule with momentum. But after only 40 minutes of conference play, they were regarded as a program that might have achieved its lofty record as a result of its soft nonconference schedule, not its talent.
“I honestly was as excited as you can be after that [loss at Kentucky],” Golden said. “A lot of people have questioned the strength of schedule we played in nonconference. Going on the road, playing in Rupp Arena against a team that we knew was really good, we didn’t guard necessarily well enough, but we played well in that game. It was a great game. In a way, it gave us confidence moving toward.”
Regardless, the Gators did not have time to sulk. The SEC would not allow it. The strongest conference in America — perhaps the strongest conference of the past 30 years in men’s college basketball — created nightly challenges for its members, and Florida’s next assignment featured the league’s most imposing outfit at the time: a No. 1-ranked Tennessee squad that had not lost a game.
The Gators responded with a lopsided, 30-point win over the Volunteers.
It was their first home win over a No. 1 team and just the third victory against a top-ranked squad in school history. Martin, Alex Condon and Denzel Aberdeen all finished in double figures that day. The Gators also amassed one of their best wins in school history without Clayton (seven points) playing like a star. Florida demonstrated that night that it was not a one-man show. But the Gators also showed they could play elite defense, proved by Tennessee’s 15-point tally in the first half.
“I think that week, with those two contests, explained to us and built a lot of belief within our program that we belonged at the top of the SEC,” Golden said.
Sure enough, by February, the Gators had risen to the top tier of the conference. But next up was Auburn, a squad that had won 14 consecutive games. Star Johni Broome had emerged as a true threat to Cooper Flagg in the race for the Wooden Award.
If the sheer matchup wasn’t enough of a problem for the Gators, the team had other issues. Martin had suffered a hip injury and would not be available for the game. Short-handed, the Gators were quickly down 15-5. The Auburn crowd cheered in anticipation of the extension of a winning streak.
Clayton (19 points) had other ideas, however, as he led a 43-23 run in the last 15 minutes of the first half. It was an insurmountable rally for the Gators.
“I think we just played very unselfish that game,” Condon said.
It was also a sign of things to come for Clayton and the source of newfound confidence for a Gators team that had traveled 312 miles to get the most significant win of its season to date.
“We were locked in. I noticed from pregame warmups that guys were dialed in, locked in and ready to take on the No. 1 team in the country,” Martin said. “Throughout the game, we were just playing hard. We were super physical. We weren’t worried about the referees or the calls.”
And more importantly, if the Gators could beat Auburn on the road — well, they could probably beat anyone, anywhere, they thought.
DURING A PRACTICE ahead of the NCAA tournament, Clayton calmly dribbled a ball near midcourt and casually launched a shot.
It went in.
“He does it all the time in practice,” Aberdeen said. “It’s nothing new to us.”
Nothing about Clayton’s achievements in the NCAA tournament have surprised the Gators. But those who had not followed his maturation into an AP first team All-American would soon see for themselves.
In the opening round of the NCAA tournament, Clayton (23 points, 4-for-9 from the 3-point line) led a team that scored 53 points in the first 16:45 seconds of a win over Norfolk State. The Gators finished with a clip of 144 points per 100 possessions. For perspective, the Golden State Warriors team that won a title with Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson during the 2016-17 season recorded a rate of 115 points per 100 possessions that year.
From there, Clayton (23 points) helped the Gators beat UConn, the defending champion, with clutch shots down the stretch of that game, too. And when his team needed him after Condon reaggravated his ankle injury against Maryland in the Sweet 16, Clayton delivered and became a playmaker to push Florida to the finish line.
But the Elite Eight matchup against Texas Tech is what made Clayton a household name. Down nine points with 3:14 to play, Condon looked over at Clayton during a late timeout.
“He was just calm,” he said.
Clayton scored eight of his 30 points during a game-winning run, which also included clutch plays by Martin, Haugh and Will Richard.
“There was like a minute and a half left, 20 seconds left on the shot clock, and he gets the ball in the middle of the paint,” Micah Handlogten said. “He dribbles straight outside the 3-point line. He hits a turnaround 3-pointer to go up by one. I don’t even know what was going through his head.”
Sure, the Gators knew they were good. But that run? It made them feel like they might be a team of destiny.
AUBURN WANTED REVENGE.
After its home loss to Auburn on Feb. 8, Dylan Cardwell called a players-only meeting. In that room, the Tigers were not shy about calling one another out following the loss.
They also replayed film of their victory over Iowa State in the Maui Invitational for three consecutive days. Why? They wanted to remember what it had been like to play with an intensity they’d lacked against the Gators two months before their rematch in the Final Four.
Things would be different this time, it seemed. Early in the second half on Saturday, Auburn had a nine-point edge after the Tigers had outplayed Florida in the first half.
But it didn’t matter. Because Florida had Clayton Jr.
“I feel like he’s in the zone every time he touches the rock,” Sam Alexis said about his team’s confidence with Clayton on the roster. “We’ve got Walt. He’s going to let it fly.”
Pearl had vowed that Clayton “can’t be the best player” on the court in the rematch, but the Florida star scored a career-high 34 points in the Alamodome on Saturday.
“That Walter Clayton Jr. is the real deal,” former North Carolina head coach Roy Williams said from his seat in the front row. “He’s the real deal.”
Everyone in the building felt the same way after Clayton scored 30 points or more in the Elite Eight and the Final Four, a feat in men’s basketball that had not been achieved since Larry Bird pulled it off for Indiana State in 1979, per ESPN Research.
Prior to Saturday’s game, Clayton had been viewed as an exceptional talent who could carry Florida to the national title. But after that game against Auburn, he’d put himself in a position to leave San Antonio with a different label: legend.
“I probably should have done more to trap the ball out of his hands a little bit,” Pearl said after his team’s loss. “Believe it or not, that was part of our game plan, but we just didn’t execute it. Just sort of say all things are kind of equal: Clayton was the difference. He was just flat out the difference. We couldn’t contain him down on that end.”
Two nights later, for 25 minutes and three seconds, Houston had found the Kryptonite. Clayton — who’d scored 64 points combined in two previous outings — had been silent and scoreless until early in the second half, when he hit a pair of free throws.
The Gators had spent the night at the Alamodome tussling their way out of a double-digit deficit, waiting for their star to don his cape and save them again.
But just when it seemed as if Clayton’s candle had burned out, he did the only thing he knew to do: He kept fighting.
There was a 3-point play late in the game. Then another tough bucket, a foul and free throw. He looked in the air and screamed after that shot. It looked like it was all coming back to him. He could feel it happening again.
And sure enough, a clutch Clayton 3-pointer tied the game, 60-60, with 3:14 to play.
In the end, Clayton showed up before it was too late.
Because, as Florida has known all season and Houston learned firsthand on Monday night, it’s never too late when Clayton is on the floor.
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