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Florida is headed to the Final Four thanks to its underdog mentality
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SAN FRANCISCO — It’s hard to explain what happened Saturday evening in San Francisco, and how Florida pulled itself out of the fire to advance to the Final Four in a stirring, come-from-way-behind 84-79 win over Texas Tech.
But the best way to explain things is to go back to the beginning and remind people that all year, from the very first media availability to the first postgame press conference and the many nights and many, many wins (34 and counting) in between, the Florida players talked about how they were never supposed to be Gators.
This NCAA Tournament might have been chalky, but this Gators’ roster, filled with multiple mid-major transfers, unheralded high school recruits and a First-Team All-American who had more high school football stars and scholarship offers than basketball offers, constructed thread by thread by a 39-year-former walk-on at Saint Mary’s, plays with the indomitable spirit of the underdog.
None of them were supposed to be here.
Not at Florida, a national championship-winning program and SEC basketball royalty, 1 of the 10 winningest hoop destinations this century, who is now headed to the Final Four for the sixth time in program history, the second-highest total in the SEC.
But maybe the fight and pluck that goes along with being overlooked is exactly why Florida didn’t panic on Saturday evening, down 9 points with just 3:14 remaining in their Elite Eight contest with Texas Tech. Most teams might have buckled under Texas Tech’s relentless physicality, toughness, and pressure.
Not these Gators.
What’s the old Bob Dylan line?
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
The seed line by Florida’s line might read “1” and the KenPom rankings might say top 2, but these Gators coaches and players play with the heart and character and chip on the shoulder mentality of an underdog.
Ask Thomas Haugh, who soared in for a huge offensive rebound and then freed himself in space to bury a 3 to cut the Red Raiders’ lead to 6 points with just 2:50 to play and hit another 3 on Florida’s next possession to trim the Texas Tech lead to just 3 points.
Haugh had 4 Power 5 scholarship offers, and only received a third-star from recruiting services when he committed to Florida, the only SEC school that offered him a scholarship.
Only a sophomore, Haugh was the best basketball player in Chase Arena in the Elite Eight, scoring 20 points, grabbing 11 rebounds, dishing out 4 assists, and finishing a game-high plus-11 in box plus/minus.
“We just saw in Tommy a reflection of who we want our teams to be,” Todd Golden told SDS earlier this season. “Tommy works hard. He wants to get better. He wanted to be a Gator terribly. It meant everything to him. And he had room to grow and get better.”
Ask Walter Clayton Jr.
Before he became the first player in Florida history to be named a Consensus First-Team All-American and well before Clayton made 2 stupendous 3-point jump shots in Steph Curry’s building to tie the game and then give the Gators the lead back with just 59 seconds to play in the Elite Eight, he was an under-recruited combo guard with plenty of Power 5 college football offers, but exactly 0 Power 5 hoops offers.
But Hall-of-Famer Rick Pitino saw something in the country kid from tiny Lake Wales, Florida, and offered him a scholarship to Iona. There, Clayton became the MAAC Player of the Year and dazzled America with a 15-point, 4-assist ballgame against eventual-national-champion Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament. Clayton could have followed Pitino to St. John’s, but he and his family saw something in the scrappy Golden, the 30-something hoophead Scott Stricklin plucked away from San Francisco after the 2022 NCAA Tournament. Clayton headed home, and ended up sending his childhood team, the Florida Gators, to the Final Four with 2 extraordinary jump shots — and plenty of clutch free throws — on Saturday night.
Want more evidence?
Alijah Martin’s story is as compelling as anyone on this team.
Martin speaks candidly about the opportunity to play at Florida, which he was given when the Gators needed to bring in an elite perimeter defender to raise the intensity and quality of a team that finished 94th in the country in defensive efficiency in 2023-24, causing them to bail out of March Madness after just 1 game last season despite a top-10 offense.
“Winning is hard,” Martin told SDS earlier this month. “All of us have worked so hard, gone through so much adversity, not just the injuries (Florida played 6 SEC games this season without at least 1 starter) but also just to be here. We worked so hard to be here, all of us. We weren’t supposed to be at a place like Florida, a national championship program in the SEC. We play with a chip on our shoulder because we know what a gift it is to be here.”
Martin started the Florida rally, making an acrobatic layup to cut the Texas Tech lead to 8 with under 7:31 remaining. Seven minutes later, clinging to a 1-point lead, Martin grabbed a huge rebound and made 2 immensely important free throws to extend the Florida lead to 3 with 20 seconds left.
When the horn sounded, Martin became the first player this century and only second in the history of the sport (Steve Krafcisin) to advance to the Final Four with 2 different programs.
The Gators are filled with stories like Haugh’s, Clayton’s, and Martin’s.
There’s Micah Handlogten, a Marshall transfer, who suffered a catastrophic injury in the SEC Championship Game a season ago and passed on a redshirt to play a month and a half of basketball with this team, some of the most impactful and important tonight, when he finished plus 9 in box/plus minus and bothered Texas Tech All-American JT Toppin with his length and size.
There’s Will Richard, the Belmont transfer who hounded Texas Tech’s guards throughout the game, helping the Gators limit Texas Tech to just 4 made 3s in its final 20 attempts after the Red Raiders started the game a scorching 6-of-7 from deep.
There are too many to mention, but collectively, this team without a single top-100 high school recruit, coached by a former walk-on, is heading to the Final Four in San Antonio.
None of them were supposed to be here.
At Florida, none of them will ever be forgotten.
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
