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Florida wins the SEC Championship, setting the stage for a March to remember
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NASHVILLE — The Florida Gators won the SEC Championship game on Sunday, manhandling rival Tennessee 86-77 to capture the program’s 5th SEC Tournament title.
The final SEC game before the NCAA Tournament was everything you’d expect it to be after a season full of the league playing the best basketball in America.
Florida and Tennessee traded body blows early, with the Volunteers intent on playing the bruising style of basketball and hard-nosed defense that’s built the program into a behemoth under Rick Barnes and the Gators refusing to back down to the challenge. The Gators can guard too, though, and it was their stifling defense, especially in stifling Tennessee’s dribble penetration and disrupting Volunteer flex and back cuts, that helped Florida hold Tennessee without a bucket for nearly 5 minutes in building a 12-point lead at 32-20 with just 5:11 remaining in the first half. Of course, you can’t keep resilient Tennessee on the mat for long, and that’s when the Volunteers came to life, scoring 10 of the next 14 points to cut the lead to 6 and send a boisterous and pumpkin orange-clad crowd roaring into life.
But that’s the thing about these ferocious Florida Gators. They are unflappable.
Every time Tennessee seemed poised to seize momentum and control of the basketball game, the Gators had an answer. The most important shot in the first half was the final one, when Florida’s Denzel Aberdeen calmly buried a 27-foot 3-point jump shot to silence the largely partisan crowd and send the Gators into the locker room up by 9 points.
For a number of reasons, Florida was determined to write its own story — or stories — on Sunday’s Championship final.
There was the miraculous comeback story of Micah Handlogten, who suffered a disastrous leg injury in this very game a season ago, but elected to forego a redshirt to play down the stretch for the Gators. To win a championship would validate Micah’s choice, and the relentless support of family, teammates, and coaches who stood by Micah when he wasn’t sure he’d play basketball again until 2026.
There was the revenge story, with Florida highly motivated to avenge their worst loss of the season, a 20-point shellacking to Tennessee at the Food City Center in January.
“They punked us up there,” Todd Golden told the media on Saturday night, ahead of the SEC Championship matchup. “We didn’t do a good job of matching their physicality. Our guys have accepted that challenge more often than not this year. We did not in Knoxville. I believe we will tomorrow.”
Golden’s belief was justified.
The Gators met every Volunteers haymaker with two jabs of their own. Zakai Zeigler steals the ball from Rueben Chinyelu to win a possession for Tennessee, yelling in exuberation? Fine. The Gators raise you Alijah Martin picking Zeigler’s pocket and taking it the other way for a transition bucket.
Struggle with Tennessee’s ball screen blitzes and aggressive denial of passing lanes? Fine. Florida raises you strong backcuts for quality looks at the rim.
Get crushed on the glass by Tennessee in Knoxville? Florida remembered, winning the rebounding battle by 14 and the offensive glass by 10 rebounds, producing 12 second-chance points to just 7 for the Volunteers.
The Gators weren’t perfect. They played through foul trouble to 3 starters and committed 6 second half turnovers, allowing the Volunteers to pull within 5 with 7 minutes to play.
But whenever the Volunteers threatened and Brigestone Arena buzzed with noise, Florida had an answer.
Many came from Walter Clayton Jr., Florida’s First-Team All American who was named the SEC Tournament MVP.
Confoundingly, Clayton Jr. was not a unanimous First-Team All-SEC media selection like Auburn’s Johni Broome or Alabama’s Mark Sears, who Clayton Jr. outplayed in the SEC Semifinals. No matter. He was the best basketball player in the building all week, and he saved his best for the stretch Sunday, scoring 15 points for the Gators in the second half, repeatedly hitting huge shots as the Volunteers crept close.
It isn’t just Florida’s sensational guards.
The Gators, put plainly, have an answer to every question.
“I think they have the best frontcourt rotation in the country,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said after the game. “Those big guys understand what they need to do and how to play. They have so much depth there. They’re big, mobile, agile. They do their jobs.”
On Saturday, they overwhelmed the shorter bench of Tennessee. As Felix Okpara and Igor Miličić Jr. dealt with foul trouble, Florida’s big men kept pummeling the glass and finding ways to impact the game in the paint, where Florida outscored Tennessee 32-20 on the afternoon. Alex Condon’s 13 points and 9 rebounds led the way, but Thomas Haugh added 11 and 6 and Handlogten and Chinyelu grabbed 6 rebounds, including 3 on the offensive glass, collectively. Florida plays for each other, with pride taken in every individual role, rather than resentment at the size or nature of the role given.
“Our team has done an incredible job all year of being unselfish,” Golden told the media after the win. “We knew early on in the year we had really good talent. But the thing that separates this team is unselfishness, being coachable, and the willingness to put the greater good of the program in front of ourselves.”
That’s a testament to the players, to be sure, but also to Golden, the 39-year old modern hoops savant Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin plucked away from San Francisco just 3 Marches ago. Golden, understanding of how to build a modern basketball roster, along with the trust he put in his staff, built this roster, which will now be a Final Four favorite when brackets are filled out this week. Florida’s staff, including longtime associate head coach Carlin Hartman, who scouted multiple wins at the SEC Tournament and is responsible for frontcourt development, along with Director of Analytics and Scouting Jonathan Safir, whose fingerprints are all over this roster, will all deserve a healthy pay increase this offseason, having now proven what they can do when provided the modern day resources and money to do it. It’s not just Golden, Hartman, and Safir either. Kevin Hovde coordinates the top-ranked offense in the sport entering March Madness. Korey McCray brought recruiting nous and SEC experience to a staff that had little. Taurean Green is a rising star in the industry and oversees player development. John Andrzejek has helped coordinate a defense that has improved 80 spots in efficiency from 2023-24 to 2024-25.
Like Florida’s players, each staffer knows and embraces their role.
But basketball isn’t just a math problem, and Golden and his staff found players who understood the hard work and humility required to win, too. Florida plays without fear of failure but without ego, either, a rare breed in a culture of instant gratification and “me first.”
As Florida played one premier SEC program and then another this weekend, it was hard not to think of something Alijah Martin told me just last week, before he celebrated Senior Day in Gainesville.
“We want to win 6 in a row (in March Madness),” Martin said. “Two more than I won at FAU. We have to work. Winning is hard. But I think we’ve played through so much adversity (injuries to 3 starters in SEC play, including Clayton Jr. and Martin). But not just injuries. Just to get 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.”
A gift to have the opportunity to be great.
A chip on the shoulder that’s made this team unflappable.
And now? SEC Champions. And the gift to play for even more.
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.
