A March Magician With Deep Incantations

The New York Times

Lunedì 7 Aprile 2025

Pagina 41

At this point, the Steph Curry comparisons might be inaccurate.

With respect to Curry, one of the greatest shooters in N.B.A.

history, he never shined like this on college basketball’s biggest stage. He never hit an impossible, fall-away corner 3 when his team desperately needed it, did not score 34 points to push his team to the national championship game, did not dazzle a stadium packed with 68,252 fans.

Curry, 37, saved all that for the N.B.A. But Walter Clayton Jr., 22, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound guard for the Florida men’s basketball team, is doing it right now.

And good news: In the event that you have not been following one of the greatest performances in N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament history, you will on Monday have one more chance to watch this March magician.

On Saturday night, on the biggest stage of his life, Clayton poured in 34 points on 11-of-18 shooting, leading the top-seeded Gators to a 79-73 win over a Southeastern Conference foe, Auburn, a fellow top seed, securing a spot in the Division I national championship game. The Gators will meet Houston for the title.

Clayton is just the 15th player in the modern era to go for more than 30 in a Final Four game, joining a list of heavy hitters that includes Danny Manning, Glen Rice, Danny Ferry, Sean Elliott and Carmelo Anthony.

Anthony was in the building on Saturday, honored at halftime as a 2025 Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. He was a freshman during his 30-plus performance, a revelation for third-seeded Syracuse in 2003 as he led the Orange to their only national championship.

He got to watch Clayton oneup him — Anthony scored 33 in his national semifinal, while Clayton scored 34. He said afterward that he is “an amazing fan of Walter.” 

“His pace, the way he controls the game, his confidence, he’s got a little bit of Damian Lillard in him,” Anthony said. “His shotmaking ability, his playmaking ability, the way he flows with the game — you don’t see many players and point guards play like that.” 

And then, maybe the truest thing of all about Clayton: “If you’re able to see Walter play in person, it makes the difference.”

 

Whether watching on TV or in person, everyone should have expected this. All Clayton does is step up and take over games when it seems his team is on the brink of collapse. He did it in the second round, saving Florida from early elimination against UConn, the two-time defending champion, when he took over the final eight minutes, scoring 13 of his 23 points. In the Gators’ round-of-8 comeback against Texas Tech, he drained two did-you-see-that 3s in the final 107 seconds.

Of course he was going to do the same at the Final Four.

The Gators looked out of sorts for stretches of the first half on Saturday, but Clayton kept them within striking distance, scoring 14 points as Auburn took an 8point lead into the locker room.

It was not surprising that Clayton got buckets. What was surprising was the way he got them — mostly by attacking the rim, often finding a wide-open lane to the basket. Six of his 11 makes on Saturday were layups, including a wild and-one bank off the glass with 2 minutes 24 seconds to go that gave Florida a 71-68 lead and sent Clayton to the line, where he finished a perfect seven of seven.

“In transition we didn’t do a good enough job of getting back and building a wall,” said the Auburn assistant Steven Pearl. “But we’re going to look back at like five or six of those transition layups and, like, we have guys that are walled up at the rim and he still finishes through contact.

“He had 34 points, I’d say half of those were our mistakes and half were him just being a really good basketball player.”

 

On Friday, Clayton recalled watching the former UConn great Kemba Walker tear through March in 2011, scoring 271 total points as he led the Huskies to the Big East tournament championship and the national title. Clayton is doing a pretty good impression of Walker: He has 185 points through Florida’s eight postseason games (62 in three SEC tournament games on the way to that title and 123 through five N.C.A.A. tournament games).

Yet he remains unimpressed with himself.

Asked which shot on Saturday will be remembered most, the one people might be talking about 10 years from now, Clayton was nonplused.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If we don’t get it done they probably won’t be talking about none of them.” 

Clayton epitomizes the word “chill,” one of his favorite descriptors when talking about his team, his halftime vibe, his overall mood about life. After his postgame news conference, he rode a golf cart through the cavernous Alamodome, scrolling through his phone and watching highlights of Florida’s win (which featured a lot of his shots).

He shuffled into the locker room wearing Ralph Lauren Polo teddy bear slides and was more excited to talk about getting them on sale than he was to talk about what he did 30 minutes earlier when wearing sneakers.

All of this is fun, sure. But it’s also what Clayton and the Gators have come to expect.

Clayton has spent the last three weeks one-upping himself, turning in so many absurd performances his teammates do not have many words for what he is doing.

“He’s special,” guard Will Richard said, before his teammates Thomas Haugh and Alijah Martin echoed Richard with the same, not-descriptive-enough explanation.

But Clayton had a different word to describe himself that applied, he said, to his feeling with the national championship looming: “Ready.”.