With legends looking on, Walter Clayton Jr.’s takeover hits the Final Four: ‘He’s special’

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At this point, the Steph Curry comparisons might be inaccurate.

With respect to the greatest shooter in NBA history, Curry never shined like this on college basketball’s biggest stage. He never hit an impossible, fall-away corner 3 when his team desperately needed it, didn’t score 34 points to push his team to the national championship game, didn’t dazzle a football stadium packed with 68,252 fans.

Curry, 37, saved all that for the NBA. But Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr., just 22 years old, 6-foot-2 and 195 pounds, is doing it right now.

Goodness, it’s fun to watch.

And good news for you, in the event you haven’t been closely following one of the greatest performances in NCAA Tournament history: On Monday you’ve got one more chance to watch this March magician.

You’ve missed quite the show already.

Saturday night, on the biggest stage of his life, Clayton poured in 34 points on 11-of-18 shooting, leading the top-seeded Gators to a 79-73 win over SEC foe and fellow top seed Auburn, securing a spot in the national championship. The Tigers will meet Houston for the title.

Clayton is just the 15th player in the modern era to go for more than 30 in a Final Four game, joining a list of heavy hitters that includes Danny Manning, Glen Rice, Danny Ferry, Sean Elliott and Carmelo Anthony.

Anthony was in the building Saturday, honored at halftime as a 2025 Hall of Fame inductee. He was a freshman during his 30-plus performance, a revelation for third-seeded Syracuse in 2003 as he led the Orange to its first, and still only, national championship.

He got to watch Clayton one-up him — literally, because Anthony scored 33 in his national semifinal, while Clayton scored 34. He told The Athletic afterward that he is “an amazing fan of Walter.”

“His pace, the way he controls the game, his confidence, he’s got a little bit of Damian Lillard in him,” Anthony said. “His shot-making ability, his play-making ability, the way he flows with the game, you don’t see many players and point guards play like that.”

And then, maybe the truest thing of all about Clayton: “If you’re able to see Walter play in person, it makes the difference.”

Whether watching on TV or in person, everyone should have expected this. All Clayton does is step up and take over games when it seems his team is on the brink of collapse. He did it in the second round, saving Florida from early elimination against the two-time defending champs when he took over the final eight minutes, scoring 13 of his 23 points. In the Gators’ Elite Eight comeback over Texas Tech, he drained two did-you-see-that?! 3s in the final 107 seconds.

Of course he was going to do the same at the Final Four.

Florida looked out of sorts and half-awake for stretches of the first half Saturday, but Clayton kept them within striking distance, scoring 14 points as Auburn took an eight-point lead into the locker room.

It wasn’t surprising that Clayton got buckets but how he did it — mostly by attacking the rim, often finding a wide-open lane to the basket. Six of his 11 makes Saturday were layups, including a wild and-one bank off the glass with 2:24 to go that gave Florida a 71-68 lead and sent Clayton to the line, where he finished a perfect 7-of-7.

“In transition we didn’t do a good enough job of getting back and building a wall,” said Auburn associate head coach Steven Pearl. “But we’re gonna look back at like five or six of those transition layups and, like, we have guys that are walled up at the rim and he still finishes through contact.

“He had 34 points, I’d say half of those were our mistakes and half were him just being a really good basketball player.”

On Friday, Clayton recalled watching former UConn great Kemba Walker tear through March in 2011, scoring 271 total points as he led the Huskies to the Big East tournament championship and the national title. Clayton is doing a pretty good impression of Walker: He’s got 185 points through Florida’s eight postseason games (62 in three SEC tournament games on the way to that title and 123 through five NCAA Tournament games).

Yet he remains unimpressed with himself.

Asked which shot Saturday will be remembered most, the one kids will be talking about 10 years from now, Clayton was nonplussed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If we don’t get it done (Monday) they probably won’t be talking about none of them.”

Clayton epitomizes the word “chill,” one of his favorite descriptors when talking about his team, his halftime vibe, his overall mood about life. After his postgame press conference he rode a golf cart through the cavernous Alamodome, scrolling through his phone and watching highlights of Florida’s win (said highlights featured a lot of his own shots). He shuffled into the locker room wearing Ralph Lauren Polo teddy bear slides and was more excited to talk about getting them on sale than he was to talk about what he did 30 minutes earlier when wearing sneakers.

All of this is fun, sure. But it’s also what Clayton and the Gators have come to expect.

Clayton has spent the last three weeks one-upping himself, turning in so many absurd performances his teammates don’t have many words for what he’s doing.

“He’s special,” Will Richard said, before Thomas Haugh and Alijah Martin echoed Richard with the exact same, not-descriptive-enough explanation.

But Clayton had a different word to describe himself that applied, he said, to his feeling both Friday and now, with the national championship looming:

“Ready.”

(Photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)

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