With a dramatic stop on the final play of the game, Florida completed a comeback over Houston to win this year’s Men’s March Madness Tournament. They came back from a 12-point deficit to do so, and only took the lead in the closing seconds of the game. Although a top seeded team that won 36 out of 40 games, Florida was the No. 4 overall team and therefore the lowest ranked of an all-one seed Final Four. With wins over heavily favored teams like Auburn and Houston, Florida’s run had drastic impacts on the leaderboard for The Page’s 2025 Bracket Challenge.
By correctly picking Florida to win this year’s tournament, Mason Olds secured the top place in The Page’s Bracket Challenge, topping his fellow students by a decent margin. Hannah Adams finished second, with more correct Final Four teams but without the 32 points that comes from picking the correct champion.
Olds said a major motivator for picking Florida was that “they had some big wins”, from defeats of Alabama and Auburn to blowout wins against some tough SEC opponents. He added that point differential, the number of points a team has cumulatively scored compared to their opponents, was also a factor in his picks. Despite competing in a historically challenging SEC conference, the Gators won many games by a high amount. Olds also liked “how they did in big games.” Florida was undefeated in 2025 postseason play entering March Madness, with a win in the SEC Conference Tournament.
This tournament was marked by a lack of upsets, as no teams seeded 13-16 scored a win for the first time since 2017. In addition, the four no. 1 seeds all reached the Final Four for only the second time in history, following 2008. Olds, who had three No. 1 seeds in his winning bracket, reflected that he was “missing the Cinderella runs” of years past.
Florida’s run to the title was marked by comeback wins over No. 8 UConn, No. 3 Texas Tech, No. 1 Auburn, and No. 1 Houston. They trailed by eight at halftime of their national semifinal against Auburn, but 34 points from Walter Clayton, the eventual Most Outstanding Player of the tournament, helped comeback to win by six. The championship game matched them up with Houston, who themselves needed a late comeback to beat a one seed.
The first half was close all the way through, with the score either a tie or a Houston lead for the majority of the 20 minutes. But after extending their lead to 12, Houston began to lose their grip as a Florida run brought the deficit to just one point with under a minute to play. The final moments all went Florida’s way, the Gators made three free throws on top of back-to-back turnovers by the Cougars. On Houston’s final possession, they looked for a beyond the arc shot that would give them the championship, but were ultimately unable to get a shot off. Alex Condon poked the ball free and passed it to Clayton as time ran out, giving the Gators a 65-63 win for their third national championship ever.
