In All-Sec Final Four Slugfest, the Florida Walter Clayton Jr. drops 34 points to Down Auburn

SAN ANTONIO – From the distant corner of Alamodome’s floor, Walter Clayton Jr. made one last game to bring his team to Monday evening: a loose ball, he pursued and then saved in the game while the weather flowed out of the clock. Florida’s star was then there, from the stone face, who beat their hands while everyone else celebrated. There is no need to get excited. It was not his first resurrection project.

The most charged male basketball conference in the country has opened the four more charges ever with a banger, and nobody delivered in a larger way than Clayton, whose 34 career points have marked the Gators’ 79-73 victory over Auburn. And in the game of the national championship on Monday Florida he went, waiting for Duke or Houston.

He was again in Florida that he detached himself from the carpet in this event, transforming a half -point deficit of eight points on his head. The Gators have been almost ground in oblivion by two -time Uconn reigning champion in the second round. They were on a very precarious precipice in the eight elite against Texas Tech, in front of a two -digit deficit at the end of the second half.

On Saturday in Alamodome, they seemed strangely mischievous and unusually slow in the first half against the absolute seed in the men’s NCAA tournament.

And the third national title of the program is however at 40 minutes.

Because Florida has Walter Clayton Jr. and the other teams have not done.

It is not an excessive simplification as it seems. The Senior All-American guard hit all the big shots to save the day against Uconn. He hit two of the greatest shots against Texas Tech. And on Saturday evening it was more or less the same, with Clayton who scored 20 of his 34 points in the second half-the most crucial is a game in three points with 93 remained seconds that provided Florida with a six-point pillow in a short-breathing game for both sides. (Not shocking, the showdown has characterized 15 lead changes and 10 ties.)

It is a kind of championship alone, unofficially, being the last team that remains outside a record of 14 guests from the century. There will be the usual provincial topics on which championship was actually the strongest. Obviously. It does not change the fact that playing male basketball in the century amounted to three months of chasing ghepardi and then fighting with them.

So this was a sort of final statement, before Florida came to the activity of trying to break down Duke or Houston on Monday evening. The Gators beat Auburn, in Auburn on February 8, and this was officially an accident. The Gators won the sec tournament and although they did it without facing the other best team in the championship in that event, this victory on this phase was more than compensated. There was no better team from the earth only means more, and probably no best avatar for the century that alters the male university basketball paradigm.

It is worth remembering that Florida had arrived at the second weekend of the NCAA tournament only once in its last nine attempts. The excellence of the under Billy Donovan program was the historical exception, not the rule, given what happened before his arrival and after his departure. And the school has been destroyed by the malaise taking a 30-year-old coach who was a former Walk-on guard in the West Coast Conference, which he implemented An approach that traces its origins to the Ivy League.

This, as they say, is not normal.

But now, Monday evening, there is the possibility of tieing the rope to those back-to-back championship teams of 2006 and 2007 … while credibly they take the case to fix a completely new standard in Gainesville. To accompany a widely accepted calculation of the relative domain: those two Florida teams ended with adequate efficiency margins of more than 28.28 and plus 30.81, respectively, for Kenpom.com. This woke up on the morning of the national semifinals with a plus-36.06 margin. And then he reached the championship match of one of the last four most loaded ever. On the same day, the coach of those consecutive champions became a Hall of Fame, for the start.

“It was a bit calm to have the opportunity to be here, to share this moment, that Florida is in the Final Four and have the opportunity to look at a little game,” said Donovan in a press conference that announced the induceds of 2025. “It is a little ironic as everything worked.”

The best of the century took the measure of the other immediately on Saturday. And very clearly on purpose.

The first call from Auburn? A Broome back in a bucket. The first set of Florida? Put Clayton from a screen for a 3-pointer. A couple of all-American oscillations right from the jump.

The assertiveness of Auburn did not decrease in the first 20 minutes. In the meantime, the Gators ended up scraping. Auburn had 26 points in the paint before the interval, definitively decreasing any advantage of depth that Florida had firsthand. (Broome, with 12 points of the first half, was arriving wherever he wanted, every time he wanted to get there.) On the other hand, the tigers forced the half stagnation in the middle of the field; Florida had only three assists on 12 baskets in the first half and zero points of break. Clayton and Alijah Martin joined for eight goals on the pitch with each other. The rest of the roster? Four, total.

Florida launched the atmosphere immediately after the break, with lively defense and aggressive offense that fueled a 11-0 race. Auburn reported the advantage over the next two possessions, and then a little stall settled: the tigers connected and Clayton continued to play ridiculous games to keep his team on the hip of Auburn. When one of them came forward, they weren’t a long time a long time. It was exactly the type of rope shooting that you would expect from seeds n. 1 heating who alternated as the best team of the nation this season.

When Martin sailed for a dirt worthy of the assembly with five and a half minutes remained-and with Broome in a deep funk, hitting only a blow in the second half until that point-stone that the Florida could have found something, even if the command was only 66-63 in that phase. But Auburn was still one two minutes from the end, lingering despite the bad recovery choices and the spherical hand.

From there, Clayton exploited a discrepancy against Auburn Big Man Dylan Cardwell for a layup and a three -point edge. Broome skipped the line with 2:02 on the left and lost two free shots: a brutally improvable moment for the most necessary Auburn player late and something similar to a deadly wound.

Because in the next journey along the floor, Clayton completed a game in three points on a disc to cross the sign of 30 points again, pushing the advantage to 74-68. Clayton then gained assistance on a Thomas Haugh burying with 37.9 seconds to play, lengthening the advantage to eight and effectively opening the road until Monday evening.

“Another”, Clayton Jr. could have been seen saying to all teammates and staff who offer him handshakes on the floor later. This is what Florida wanted the whole spring.

(Photo: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)