Gators take the river: Behind the scenes of Florida’s dramatic NCAA title run and raucus boat parade

SAN ANTONIO — Todd Golden flings the door open to the coaches’ locker room, and before he’s even three steps in, he roars “PRETTY F—ING INCREDIBLE!!”

He checks his phone and sees 719 unread texts. That number will climb over the next couple of hours, as it should, because Monday night’s game meant 39-year-old Golden became the youngest coach to win a title since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. 

The 36-4 Florida Gators are 2025’s kings of the tournament, having outlasted rugged, near-unkillable Houston. Golden’s Gators beat Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars at their own game with a 65-63 conquest, the game unexpectedly ending without a shot attempt after Houston’s Emanuel Sharp accidentally psyched himself out on the type of blunder that he and his Cougar teammates have induced opponents into for years. 

Monday’s championship was Florida’s the fourth and final comeback victory in this tournament, having overcome a variety of tricky situations: against UConn (down six late in the second round), Texas Tech (a magic-trick escape after trailing by 10 late in the Elite Eight), Auburn (nine in the second half against the No. 1 overall seed) and, ultimately, fighting back from a 12-point deficit to Houston.

Pretty bleeping incredible, indeed.

Golden dons one of the two snipped game nets around his neck; Final Four Most Outstanding Player Walter Clayton Jr. is on the other side of the wall wearing the second twine trophy. A 2025 championship hat cozily sits backward on Golden’s head and a Florida Gators towel rests on his shoulders. The celebration is drawing long in the locker room and back hallways of the Alamodome, but the party has only just begun. The team eventually makes its way to the bus. As Clayton boards, sunglasses on after midnight, holding a container filled with food, he announces his presence to everyone on the team bus: “CHAMPS, MAN! CHAMPS! WHAT UP!”

Golden is in the front seat, eating a late dinner himself: chicken wings and mac and cheese. What does the head coach of a national championship team do in a moment of quietude like this? He pulls out his phone to relive the final moments of the game. Golden cues up X and watches, for the first time, the play that sealed the victory and changed the lives of everyone in this Florida program forever. 

Then he plays it back again as the bus pulls out of the Alamodome with a police escort taking the quick route to the drop-off spot: barges on the San Antonio River await.

Florida went on a 35-21 run to finish the game in the final 15 minutes after falling behind 42-30 with 15:30 to go. The Gators’ 12-point comeback ties for the third-largest in NCAA title game history. Monday also marked the first time the national title game was decided by two points or fewer since another slugfest 15 years ago: Duke‘s 61-59 win against Butler in 2010.

It wasn’t just the margin, it was the team that gave it up. Houston hadn’t lost a game like this in years — and the Cougars’ final possession was an ironic bummer to the end of a game that held tension for most of the night. UH had a lead for 30:44 of game time; Florida had the lead for a grand total of 1 minute and 4 seconds. 

From the time it was 10-8 in favor of Houston until Florida took the lead back 64-63 on a pair of Alijah Martin foul shots with 43 seconds to go, Florida failed to hold a lead for almost 90% of the game.  

But it got it when it had to have it.

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Two days after Houston made Duke meltdown with turnovers, missed rebound opportunities and a dry spell of shooting, Florida did the same to Houston. The Cougars committed five turnovers in the first 38 minutes and 39 seconds. In the final 1:21, they had four, the final one being Sharp’s blunder of a giveaway, a paralyzing paroxysm unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the final sequence of a national championship battle. 

That play came after Sharp lost the ball out of bounds with 26.5 to go, Houston trailing 64-63. 

Florida knew it had a shot well before that: Martin’s 3 that made an eight-point game a five-point gap with 12:38 to go was the play. 

“I saw Walt’s reaction when he hit it and I said, ‘OK, we’re still here,’ ” UF associate head coach Carlin Hartman said on the team bus. “That’s when we started to believe.”

The comeback kings of this tournament pose for a group picture above the River Walk, then take the steps down to the boats that await to take them on a slow-ride aquatic parade they’ll never forget. 

San Antonio is a special city for college basketball in large part because of its championship culmination. No other spot offers this: a team hopping on board barges — nobody fall in! Careful with those phones, fellas! — and cruising down a dirty river to the deliriously drunken shouts of glee from thousands. As the staff boards the boat, someone has already FaceTimed a recruit that has already committed to the Gators.

“That’s why you’re coming here!” Golden tells him. 

The cigars come out. They’re cut with a quickness. The aroma takes over the mini barge in no time. As the players are a boat ahead, someone has brought on a speaker system and is blaring celebratory music. Here with the coaching staff, they’re all starting to soak it in, and as the boat turns the first corner of this water-bound parade, the Gator chomps and hollering hits heavy. 

“WHAT THE F—!!” one woman shouts with glee.

“WHAT THE F— IS RIGHT!” Hartman yells back with a laugh. 

The glow of the lights of the restaurants and hotels hits, and as the barge passes under the Presa St. bridge, a rogue Houston fan shares his regrets to the way things ended. Golden listens for a moment, then lets him have it.

“Busted your ass!” he howls. Florida fans in earshot ring out hosannas. 

Then the head coach turns to his assistants, Kevin Hovde and Jonathan Safir, and he’s like a kid on Christmas. 

“We’re the national champions! We won the f—ing  national championship!” 

As they huddle up and hug, cigars in hand, the chants from fans flanking both sides of the San Antonio River Walk start to dominate the space, reverberating off the buildings. It’s great! To be! A-Florida Ga-tor! Said it’s great! To be! A-Florida Ga-tor! Said it’s great! To be! A-Florida Ga-tor! 

The boats mosey past the Hilton Palacio Del Rio, then the restaurant Casa Rio and more. As we pass under the Commerce St. bridge, more and more people come into view. 

“Soak that shit in,” Hartman tells Hovde. “This everything you could ever dream of. And more.”

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It’s a sweet, calm moment that is jolted back into jubilation after a man who has evidently been walking along with much of the parade route yells out: “Todd, you’re a f—ing legend!” 

“You’re a f—ing legend!” Golden yells back.

It’s getting louder and louder. Bodies lean over balconies. Everyone from frat bros to friends to 5-year-old fans are out to see and celebrate their Gators. 

Florida could have easily done something to get away from itself in the second half, on account of panic or uncertainty or desperation to throw a curve at Houston. Instead, at the under-16 timeout, Hovde said the coaches agreed in a side huddle, before addressing the team, that they had to double down on being themselves and focusing on what they do best. 

Physicality, defensive toughness, sharing the ball, refusing to mentally get twisted even with Houston holding an edge. 

Don’t think about how Houston beat Duke or what it did to get to this point. Florida’s players had to believe they would eventually wrestle the game back. They still had plenty of time.

Sports can be so laughably unpredictable. Clayton came into Monday night with 123 points and pacing toward one of the best six-game struts college basketball had seen on the March Madness stage over the past three decades. Against Houston, he was scoreless in the first half.

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“Down three against this team at the half? You take that,” Hartman said. “That’s the most physical team we’ve faced all year.”

It boggles the mind a bit to accept that Florida won the game despite Clayton not even hitting his first field goal until 7:54 remained, when he connected on a lefty and-1 layup to cut Houston’s lead to 48-47, then sank the foul shot out of the timeout to tie it for the first time since it was 21-all. 

Houston would have snuffed the light out of most teams in that scenario. But the Cougars, the best 3-point shooting team in the country entering the title game, wound up just 6-for-25 for the game. Florida overcame its own 6-for-24 shooting. The Cougars had bodies flying, flinging, thrusting as is their wont — materializing as if magnetized every time the ball jounced off the rim. Golden’s Gators were ready and stayed in the fight, even when down 12 in the second half.

Florida evolved into this team that lived comfortably with deficits against some of the most threatening teams in the sport. Few teams have ever beaten longer late-game odds so many time en route to a championship.

As for Clayton’s bad start (no points in the first half), it wasn’t even addressed in-game. 

“He’s too confident,” Hovde said. “When we need big baskets he’s going to find a way to make big plays. We’ve seen it enough over and over.” 

As for that last play, here’s some insight from the barge more than two hours after Sharp’s gaffe clinched it for Florida.

“We were switching 1 through 4,” Hovde, who had the scout of the game, said. “Houston often runs what I call ‘drifts,’ but they’re basically flares for Cryer. We told the guys to be aware for Cryer to flare for a shot. But they ended up covering it well. Sharp actually made the smart play by not touching it and allowing us to get the ball back. We adjusted on the fly, and then for (Alex) Condon to lay out for the ball to end the game was so fitting. He’s hustle player.” 

The riverboat parade goes for nearly an hour, including a 15-minute break to hop off, accept the NABC championship trophy, and acknowledge the thousands in view and earshot. Orange and blue coat the canal, and as Florida’s coaches and players give quick thanks, almost all of them give a shout to the team’s slogan: “Gator boys stay hot!”

As Golden stands at the front of the boat near the end of the route, he takes a moment to reflect; this season has been as gratifying, but also taxing, as anything he’s ever experienced. 

“It’s amazing,” Golden says. “It is a great finish to what’s been a lot of hard work put together by a lot of great guys, both on our staff and our players. I’m just really happy that we could provide this opportunity for our guys to be celebrated like this.”

He says it doesn’t feel real. He knows this championship run came ahead of schedule, but that doesn’t make it any less gratifying. You see it on the faces of his players in the boat up all of 50 feet ahead of his. 

“It’s sinking in, but it’s not all the way there,” Golden says. “I feel really, really lucky.”

These are the final hours for this group. Not just the players — Clayton and some others are moving on — but the coaches. Hovde is flying to New York on Wednesday to start his job as the coach of Columbia, where he and Golden first met as assistants under Kyle Smith. Fellow assistant John Andrzejek is off to coach Campbell in the CAA. 

As the Florida pep band fires up the school fight song two boats up for what feels like the 17th time in the past 45 minutes, UF strength coach Victor Lopez pipes up: “We’re not going to sleep tonight!”

“Why would you?” Golden responds. 

Florida is back on top of the college basketball world. Every championship night is unforgettable, but this scene is one-of-a-kind. A cacophony of crazy fans screaming their guts out long into the San Antonio night is the type of reward few outside of sports can really understand. This is a ride that, in some ways, they’ll all be on together for the rest of their lives.