SAN ANTONIO — For the past five months, the conversation surrounding college basketball’s best player involved only two names: Duke’s Cooper Flagg and Auburn’s Johni Broome.
A third name paced just behind.
On Saturday night, Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. caught up.
Clayton, a unanimous CBS Sports All-America first-team selection, picked the perfect place for the best game of his career. The centerpiece to Florida’s outstanding season logged a personal-best 34 points — 20 in the second half, one crowd-bursting bucket after another — to lift No. 1 seed Florida past No. 1 overall seed Auburn, 79-73, in the 2025 Final Four.
The instantly legendary performance puts Clayton’s name among some of the best to ever do it on college basketball’s biggest stage. He became the first player to drop 30+ points in a national semifinal since Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony for Syracuse in 2003 and the first to post 34+ points in a Final four victory since Al Wood of North Carolina in 1981.
As fate would have it, Anthony and two-time Florida national title winning coach Billy Donovan were in the building Saturday night to witness it; both were announced as inductees into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Class of 2025 earlier in the day.
As Anthony and Donovan were honored at halftime, Clayton and Todd Golden’s Gators were in the locker room staring down a 46-38 deficit that came after Auburn played one of its best first halves of the past two months. It was the first time since Feb. 25 against Georgia that the Florida were outscored going into the break; all four of its losses this season came when trailing at halftime.
Then the Gators did what they’ve done 17 out of 18 times since Feb. 4: found a way to a win.
Conversely, Auburn lost for the first time this season (26 games) when leading by 5-plus points at halftime. It ends the season 0-2 against Florida by a combined margin of 15 points.
Clayton’s gargantuan night continued a Gators safari through this bracket that’s created more drama than any other team in an event aptly named March Madness.
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Saturday was Florida’s third theatric come-from-behind win in five NCAA Tournament games. The first was a trap-door escape against two-time defending champion UConn in the second round. Against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight, the Gators found a route to survival after trailing by 10 with a little more than 5 minutes remaining.
“He’s been doing it for us all year, and I’m just really happy for him that he’s finally starting to get the recognition that he deserves,” said Golden of Clayton after the game in a conversation with CBS Sports. “He’s just a great, great young man, great leader, someone that commands a lot of respect from his teammates, and they love him. Does a great job of sharing the sugar and giving a lot of credit to his teammates that put him in that position. And you know when you have a guy like that — that’s a hard worker, that’s coachable and brings great effort every day — it just bleeds through the rest of your program.”
On Saturday, the Alamodome brimmed with energy fitting of such a fantastic matchup. Auburn had a lead as large as nine points with 18:30 to go, but Clayton and Florida simply refused to die — opting instead to ascend to a different level.
The senior, by way of Iona, outscored Auburn 10-8 in the final 4:30. For the third time in this tournament, he delivered 10 or more points in the final 5 minutes of regulation.
“Clayton was the difference,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “He was just flat out the difference. We couldn’t contain him down that end.”
Clayton 34 points on 11-for-18 shooting, including 5-for-8 from 3-point range, made him just the fifth player to ever score 30 points and hit five 3s in the Final Four, joining Villanova’s Donte DiVincenzo (2018), Maryland’s Juan Dixon (2002), Michigan’s Glen Rice (1989) and UNLV’s Freddie Banks (1987).
Rick Pitino, who coached Clayton at Iona and was also in the building Saturday night, told CBS Sports he wasn’t at all surprised to see his former player show up in a moment of this magnitude.
“Walt led his high school team to back-to-back state championships,” Pitino said. “He helped Iona to win league and tournament championships. Now, he’s playing in the national championship game — and going from second round [of the NBA Draft] to the lottery.”
Most impressive of all? Clayton was the obvious marked man for Auburn, getting the ball denied with constant double teams whenever he eventually possessed it … yet the Tigers were helpless trying to contain him.
Coupled with scoring 30 points in that West Regional final against the Red Raiders, Clayton became the first player since Indiana State’s Larry Bird in 1979 to have back-to-back 30-point games in the Elite Eight or later. The only other players to accomplish such a feat are a laundry list of legends: Jerry West (West Virginia, 1959), Wilt Chamberlain (Kansas, 1957), Clyde Lovellette (Kansas, 1952).
Clayton also made Gators program history in the Final Four. He became the leading single-season scorer at Florida with 702 points this season. His 123 points over the last five games are the most by any UF player in an NCAA Tournament (passing two-time champion Joakim Noah), and his 34 points on Saturday night were the most by any Florida player in the Final Four (running by Udonis Haslem).
All of it stands as proof that Clayton’s name belongs right beside Broome and Flagg — at least.
“Everybody sees it,” teammate Will Richard said of Clayton’s impact. “He’s poised, calm and collected, confident in himself. We have that confidence in him.”
Broome, visibly not himself due to a lingering left arm injury, was held without a field goal in the final 15-plus minutes. It was stark to see a player who dominated the first half (12 points) and stood among the best players all season get contained while Clayton was borderline incandescent.
“We did a great job of guarding Johni one-on-one in the second half,” Golden said. “I think he was 1 for 4 from the field. We started getting out in transition a little bit, saw the ball go through the basket, started gaining some confidence. We obviously played a really, really good second half.”
Clayton and his team will get to play for a national title on Monday night. Broome’s college career is now over.
It wasn’t all Clayton for the Gators, though. Alijah Martin finished with 17 points, four of which came in memorable, airborne fashion. Martin skied for a breakaway dunk to make it 59-57 off a sloppy pass to Broome with 9:54 to go, which felt as if it had a chance to significantly shift momentum in the game.
Just a few possessions later: the dunk of the tournament — maybe the season. This felt more than significant, as Martin’s slam shook the foundation of the Tigers’ building.
“I got weapons around me,” Clayton said of his fellow stars, including Martin, who became the first player in NCAA history to participate in the Final Four with two different programs (FAU in 2023).
Clayton remains the biggest weapon of all.
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When the final buzzer sounded, Auburn managed just 27 second-half points, its second-lowest mark of the season. An Auburn team that stood as the sport’s best through the end of January ultimately ran into a team from within its own conference — the nation’s best conference — that was taller, stronger, longer and healthier.
It was fitting for Florida that Donovan was in attendance alongside Anthony and the other Naismith inductees. The Gators are in the national championship game for the fourth time in program history and first since Donovan last took them there in 2007, completing Florida’s back-to-back title run Noah, Al Horford, Taurean Green and Lee Humphrey.
“I actually saw Coach Donovan kind of behind our bench right before the second half started,” Golden said. “I was thinking how amazing it was that he’s here, a guy that is the face of Florida basketball, had such an amazing career in Gainesville and obviously after. What he was able to do, he raised the bar pretty high at Florida. There’s some pretty high expectations now because of what he was able to do in his time there.”
With two games over the next three days, Donovan will likely be back with his Chicago Bulls while the Gators become the first SEC team to contend for a national championship since Kentucky, 11 years ago.
With Clayton as his commanding floor general and less than 48 hours to prepare for a historic showdown in the Alamodome, Golden may well stand alongside Donovan in Florida basketball’s history books by the time this Final Four concludes Monday night.