College basketball’s quietest blue blood, Florida goes for a third national title

JAMIE SQUIRE/GETTY IMAGES - On Monday, Florida can become 

just the fourth program to win three or more NCAA titles since 2000.

7 Apr 2025 - The Washington Post

BY CHUCK CULPEPPER

SAN ANTONIO — At the first March Madness closing Monday night of the 2000s, something of an oddball turned up amid the customary glitz. Florida had reached a breakthrough Final Four six years earlier under coach Lon Kruger, and it had led Duke by 13 in the second half of that semifinal before Grant Hill happened, but it did not necessarily count as a men’s college basketball “brand” and seemed familiar only to college basketball connoisseurs.

Someone asked Billy Donovan, a fourth-year Gators coach in 2000, whether he had spoken that week with his mentor, Rick Pitino, then a third-year Boston Celtics coach. “I heard from him through a fax,” Donovan said.

So it was long ago when Florida lost to season-long titan Michigan State in that final, but 25 years later on another closing Monday night at the basketball theater and in what you might call a different era, Florida reappears as something else. Its semifinal halftime opposite Auburn on Saturday happened to coincide with Donovan’s presence on the court as a fresh Hall of Fame inductee who stopped here along the path to Charlotte, where his Chicago Bulls bested the Hornets, 131-117, on Sunday. And look at this: Four programs have appeared in at least four national championship games in the 2000s, and the list has North Carolina and Connecticut with five and Kansas and Florida with four.

Could Florida belong among those the cliché calls blue bloods? “Our fans would tell you that they think we are a blue blood or at least they should be in the conversation,” Athletic Director Scott Stricklin said Sunday in an Alamodome hallway. “You know, there’s a tremendous amount of pride with what happened when Billy was there and rightly so.” He said, “We’re on a lot of lists with not a lot of other schools,” and he noted that includes the one about programs reaching Final Fours with three different coaches in the current seeding era, a list that includes North Carolina, Connecticut and Kansas (as well as Oklahoma). Florida has gone with Kruger, Donovan and now Todd Golden, all of them hired from afar, with Golden previously at San Francisco.

Florida’s places on the lists of empires owe much to Donovan, of course, and his 19 seasons in Gainesville with 15 NCAA tournament appearances and four Final Fours and three more Elite Eights and so on. His Florida spent the Madnesses of 2006 and 2007 becoming the first back-to-back champion since Duke in 1991-92 and the last before Connecticut in 2024-25. Florida’s five Final Four berths in the 2000s rank sixth behind five of the usual “brands,” as goes the American parlance. If Florida can best Houston on Monday night, it would slide into a tie with Duke and North Carolina for titles in the span with three, behind only Connecticut’s five.

Seen in the wide light, this Florida team — at 35-4 and a hot pick to win the tournament all along, then a grand survivor in its tussles with Connecticut and Texas Tech — comes as manna for the parched. It has been a while since Donovan’s next-to-last Gators team went to the 2014 Final Four as the lone No. 1 seed there, losing as did everyone to Connecticut’s No. 7 seed, and a while since Mike White’s Florida team got to the 2017 Elite Eight. It has been a bit more of a while (17 years) since Urban Meyer’s second and last national football title at Florida, and that Florida has not reached any of the first 11 College Football Playoffs. Eras have shifted. Far from 2000 when Florida arrived at the last Monday with two straight top-five recruiting teams, now it arrives as an example of this era with the art of mixing transfers: star Walter Clayton Jr. from Iona, Alijah Martin from Florida Atlantic, Will Richard from Belmont, Rueben Chinyelu from Washington State, Micah Handlogten from Marshall. As it goes with empires, there’s a push to restore something and regain cause for haughtiness.

“For sure, obviously Billy Donovan had this thing — he had it rocking,” Clayton said Sunday. “And when he left, you know, I wouldn’t call it down years, but you know, just I guess weren’t playing up to the expectations that Florida people expect. But yeah, man, that’s one of the things I talked about with Coach Golden coming back here, getting back to that Florida standard, getting back to the expectations. So I think we’re doing a good job this year, and we’ve got to keep it going for one more game.”

Born in early 2003 and hailing from Lake Wales, Florida, just below Orlando, Clayton grew up with an idea of the place. Like many a transfer in this volatile time, he has constructed his sentiment quickly. He had pointed out, in a news conference earlier, that Florida’s staff features Taurean Green, point guard from its two national championship teams. “I’m just thankful, man,” Clayton said. “Obviously Florida has a great history. I grew up watching it. Obviously we got T. Green on the staff to tell us about the experiences. Just a great feeling to go out there and win games, having Gator Nation support us.”

All the roots and legacies, in fact, have brought a curious confluence, as these things often go in college sports. On Donovan’s teams of 1996-97 and 1997-98, there’s a reserve guard listed, a walk-on. He played in eight games one season and five the next, getting two points, eight rebounds and four assists the first year and three rebounds and two assists the next.

He’s Eddie Nuñez, who eventually ventured into athletic administration and last August became the athletic director at, of course, Houston.