The banners will be hung. The rings will be handed out. History will remember Florida 65, Houston 63.
But anyone who watched the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game live will remember something else entirely: bad basketball.
This wasn’t a gritty defensive battle or a clash of basketball minds trading chess moves. It was a game where the threes never fell, shots clanged off the rim or missed it entirely and the final possession of the season, with everything on the line, ended not with a buzzer-beater or a heroic drive but with confusion, hesitation and a turnover that was so anticlimactic it left the impartial angry.
In a sport that thrives on March Madness moments, this Final Four finale gave us… nothing.
To be clear, Florida and Houston earned their spots. Both had tremendous seasons. Florida surging late to win the SEC and roll through the tournament, and Houston building on years of consistency under Kelvin Sampson.
Their paths to San Antonio were filled with clutch performances and tough wins. But the championship game is supposed to be the crescendo, not the crash.
Instead, it played like a November exhibition between two teams just learning to play with each other. The ball rarely moved with purpose. Houston was chucking up shots at a wild pace when they’ve been a team that dominated in the paint.
Florida shot just 35% from the field, and Houston, just 31.9%. There were a combined 22 turnovers, and both teams started a combined 0 for 13 from behind the arc. Both teams kept hauling up three-pointers, finishing 12 for 49, good for a combined 24%.
For 36 minutes, Houston only committed four turnovers. In the final four minutes? Five!
One of the final turnovers was an embarrassing ball off Emanuel Sharp’s knee with under 30 seconds left and only one point down.
It wasn’t just the players that had a sloppy performance.
In the first half, the refs swallowed their whistles and called only four fouls. They let their presence known in the second half with 26 fouls.
Every time one side made a small run, the refs responded with whistles. The ticky-tack fouls and lengthy stoppages for reviews made the whole game lack rhythm.
It was basketball in fits and starts. And that would’ve been forgivable, forgettable, even. If not for how it ended.
Down two with 19.8 seconds left, Houston had the ball. Plenty of time. Sampson called timeout and drew up a final shot. On paper, it probably looked good. In execution, it was anything but.
L.J. Cryer slowly walks it up the court and passes to Milos Uzan, who the Gators quickly swarm. Uzan is able to find Emanuel Sharp at the top of the key with just under five seconds left.
Sharp gathers, goes up for the shot with a leaping Walter Clayton Jr. in his face and ends up dropping the ball. Knowing he couldn’t touch the ball or would have been called for a walk, he stares at the ball as the clock runs out.
No shot attempt. Just confusion and regret.
The Cougars didn’t lose because of one play. But the way that possession unfolded was the perfect capstone for how the game had gone: out of sync, underwhelming, and flat-out bad.
Florida will celebrate, and rightfully so. A championship is a championship, no matter how it’s won. Todd Golden has done a terrific job in just a few short years in Gainesville, and his team showed resilience in this tournament. They’re cutting down nets and living their dreams.
But this game will not be replayed with fondness for fans, neutrals and future rewatchers. It will be remembered for what it wasn’t, thrilling, clean or well-played.
Years from now, don’t expect this one to show up when highlight montages roll before future title games. There’s no one shining moment here. It was just dead possessions and a final play that summed it all up.
In a tournament that so often delivers the best of college basketball, the final game gave us its worst.
