Cougars, Gators in tight battle in final seconds of NCAA men’s basketball championship

Emanuel Sharp dribbled the ball off his leg in the face of Florida pressure and the Gators will have the ball with a 64-63 lead with 26.5 seconds to go.

Florida is in the lead after two Alijah Martin free throws, their first lead since being ahead 8-6 in the first half.

The teams are trading buckets here late as the action is getting intense.

What began as the lowest-scoring first half in a title game since 2011 has become a back-and-forth nailbiter that will come down to the final possessions. With 3:24 to play, Houston leads 60-57. Houston is shooting 66 percent on free throws so far, while Florida is at 80 percent. That could come into play in these final moments.

After a scoreless first half, Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr. is up to 8 points in the second half. He’s still struggling from the field, but Clayton Jr. has found a way to get to the line in the last few minutes of the game.

Once down by 12 in this second half, Florida has tied the game with less than eight minutes to play in the game at 48-48. Walter Clayton Jr. scored his first field goal of the game, a nifty left-handed layup, to forge the tie.

Though the Cougars were been in front for much of the night, they are shooting 32.8% with 7:54 to go. Their poor shooting has allowed the Gators back in the game.

Walter Clayton Jr. is at the line with a chance to tie, as Florida trails 48-47.

The Cougars are up 48-44 with 8:31 to play but have not scored since 11:29 remained on the clock. This is where Houston’s offensive improvement this season needs to be seen if it wants to win its first national title.

After trailing by as many as 12 points, the Gators have made a comeback here in the second half.

Florida is currently on a 7-0 run to cut the Houston lead to 45-41. And Thomas Haugh is at the line for one shot to potentially make it a three-point game with 12:06 to go.

Florida has trimmed a 12-point deficit to just 45-41 with 12:06 remaining. After four combined free throws during a free-flowing first half, the second half is being officiated much more tightly. Houston has nine fouls and Florida eight as the teams have now combined for eight free throws in just eight minutes of the second half.

Florida senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. has struggled mightily in the face of Houston’s aggressive defense tonight.

The Cougars are doubling and trapping Clayton Jr. hard, forcing him to get the ball out of hands more often than not. Clayton Jr. has three turnovers and only four field-goal attempts, including only one in the last 16 minutes and change.

Clayton Jr. will need to find answers — or his teammates will need to take advantage of the attention on him — if the Gators are going to come back.

With Houston up 42-30 with 15:48 to play in the second half behind an 8-0 run, Florida is trailing by more than it has all tournament. There is plenty of time remaining but it’s not a good sign that Houston continues to clamp down on Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr., who has still yet to score.

The Gators were called for a technical after a Will Richard foul drew an animated reaction from their bench.

Florida has come out physical in the second half but was just called for three straight fouls, a couple of which were a little iffy.

Houston leads 37-30 with 17:21 to go.

Florida committed too many self-inflicted wounds in the first half in the form of nine turnovers and it didn’t take long for more to happen. Both Alex Condon and Will Richard have been called for putting their shoulder into Houston defenders unnecessarily away from the ball. Florida is within 36-30 with 17:21 to play in the second half but can’t keep costing itself shot attempts.

Buckle up because a national champion will be decided in 20 minutes. Houston begins the second half leading Florida, 31-28. Both these teams reached this point because of their resiliency. Who will execute their plan better to win it all?

A lot has gone wrong for the Gators in the first half: They’re shooting only 37.9% from the field, they have nine turnovers compared to only two for the Cougars, and Walter Clayton Jr. has scored zero points.

Despite all of that…Florida is only down by three points. If the Gators can turn around even one of those categories in the second half, they’ll be in good position to come back.

Houston has controlled this game from the start but never broke Florida, either. That has left the Gators hanging around with 20 minutes to play and if the NCAA Tournament has taught us an important lesson it’s that Florida has consistently won while trailing.

Stats! Both teams are shooting 37% from the field, and have attempted only two free throws. Florida’s Achilles’ heel has been its nine turnovers and yet Houston managed only four points off them. Will Richard leads Florida with 14 points and Mylik Wilson has seven points to lead Houston, off the bench.

The Gators have been a mess offensively so far tonight.

With 3:41 left in the first half, Florida is shooting only 40.9% from the floor, and the Gators have as many field goals made (9) as turnovers.

The Cougars lead, 29-21, with 4:46 before halftime by showing an ability to score quickly that has not always come easily. Florida came into the night as the offense that preferred to get up and down quickly, but so far Houston has used its defense to get quick baskets on the other end.

Gators senior guard Will Richard has hit all three of his team’s 3-pointers, shooting 3-of-3 from distance through the game’s first 15 minutes. His outside shot is helping Florida hang around in the face of Houston’s relentless defense.

The Gators have seven turnovers already just 12-plus minutes into this game, to one turnover for Houston. Two possessions ended for Florida when passes into their big men on the low block led them to shuffle their feet and travel when it looked like their first instinct was to pass and not even look at the basket. Houston has scored four points off of Florida’s turnovers.

At the under-eight timeout, Florida and Houston are shooting a combined 39% from the field.

Is it nerves? Or have the Cougars successfully dragged this game into the mud?

After both teams combined to miss their first 13 3-point attempts, the Gators have hit their last two to cut into Houston’s lead.

3-point shooting has been a major factor in Florida’s success in the tournament.

These offenses are struggling mightily to put the ball in the basket, combining for 11-of-33 shooting with 10:18 to play before halftime. Star Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr. is still scoreless, 0-for-3 from the field.

With 13:12 left in the first half, Cougars big man J’Wan Roberts gets his first rest of the game after grabbing three offensive rebounds and blocking a shot in his first seven minutes of game action. Houston scored soon after to take a 12-10 lead.

After over eight minutes of play, both teams senior star guards are scoreless.

Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. and Houston’s L.J. Cryer have 0 points on a combined 0-of-6 shooting.

The action has been entertaining though not particularly crisp to start.

With 15:05 left in the first half, Florida and Houston have combined to hit only 7 of their 20 field-goal attempts so far — a 35% field-goal percentage.

The Cougars would probably like this game to stay more of a defensive battle.

This game is tied at 8-8 with five minutes gone in the first half. Alex Condon, who was severely limited in Saturday’s semifinal for Florida, already has four points for the Gators.

Definitely louder cheers for Houston in the dome tonight, perhaps due to the “home” state advantage. Houston is just a drive away from San Antonio, meaning many of these fans didn’t have to go very far to make it tonight.

Houston 68, Florida 65

Even Phi Slamma Jamma didn’t reach the heights the Cougars did Saturday while rallying from 14 points down to beat Duke. That performance imbued Houston with a confidence that will carry them to its first national championship.

Houston and Florida have tipped off in tonight’s championship game. Houston had the ball first but their first shot rimmed out.

Without a doubt it was Houston’s, for two reasons. Though Houston’s defense was ranked as the best in the country this season in field-goal percentage allowed and total points allowed, Duke’s historically efficient offense presented its most difficult challenge.

Not only did the Blue Devils bog down offensively in the second half, they went more than seven minutes without a field goal, an absurd drought given Duke’s talent. Perhaps the even harder challenge for Houston, however, was finding enough offense to complete the comeback.

Scoring has never come easily for Kelvin Sampson’s teams in recent seasons, and though this year’s team is much more dangerous, it still doesn’t often produce points in bunches. Emanuel Sharp won’t have to pay for a meal the rest of his life around Houston’s campus with the way he shot the ball in the final minutes.

Houston’s defense led the nation this season by averaging 58 points allowed; only four teams were able to score more than 70 points. That’s an important threshold, however, because the Cougars are 33-0 when they allow 69 points or fewer but 2-4 when they allow 70-plus.

Why does that number matter? Largely it’s a function of Houston’s offense not matching up well in a shootout. The Cougars actually have shot the ball well, making 39.9% of their 3-pointers, but on average they’re scoring about 12 fewer points per game than Florida. The Gators will want to run to score quickly, while Houston prefers to play methodically.

With a win tonight, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson, 69, would become the oldest coach to win an NCAA men’s basketball championship. Jim Calhoun was 68 when Connecticut won in 2011.

“When you’re pushing 70, you look at things a lot differently,” Sampson told reporters yesterday. “Last night I got so many texts, I haven’t returned any, there are too many … but I saw Tubby [Smith] and Rick Barnes and Tom Izzo and [Gregg Popovich] and a bunch of the older coaches, and they all kind of had a similar message to me. You know, ‘Win one for the old guys’ or something like that.”

No matter the result tonight, the matchup of two No. 1 seeds guarantees that for the 26th time since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, the national champ will be a No. 1 seed. Of the last 18 champions, including tonight’s, 14 will have been top seeds.

Houston and Florida are playing each other for the first time in an NCAA Tournament, and this is only the third meeting all time. The last was in 1973. That was more than a decade before Florida coach Todd Golden, 39, was even born.