When UF’s class of 2007 shared tales of what it was like to win a national title, current UF students brushed them off. The stories about climbing traffic lights, mounting roofs and shotgunning beers on police cars were nothing but a myth and a dream.
On Monday night, as Florida students sat on the edge of their seats, they understood anything could happen in the last few seconds of Florida’s national championship game against Houston. As Houston redshirt junior guard Emanuel Sharp went up for a 3-point shot, the air in Gainesville grew stale. When he landed on the ground, ball still in hand, Gators started to cheer.
When the buzzer sounded only seconds later and UF senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. jumped into his teammates arms, Gator fans descended onto the streets. And they didn’t leave.
UF biology junior Max Malaussena turned 21 years old at midnight, merely 45 minutes after Florida secured the title. To him, it was a birthday miracle.
“It was a little bit anticlimactic, but the 12-point comeback was amazing. That was a great f*cking feeling, going from low to high like that,” he said.
For the fourth consecutive time, the Gators got off to a sluggish start. UF held the lead in the championship game for a mere 63 seconds, but fans — unwavering in their Gator faith — often refer to Florida as a second-half team.
Florida and Houston combined to miss their first 13 attempts from beyond the arc, but that rate didn’t hold through the entirety of the night. When Florida started to shake off its lethargic energy, the entire city felt it.
“It’s a party in Gainesville. Gainesville will burn tonight,” Malaussena said.
The Stephen C. O’Connell Center opened its doors at 7 p.m. to allow fans in for the university’s watch party, but some students were in line before 10 a.m. to ensure good seats. By 4 p.m., the line had grown to 200. When the doors opened, there were hundreds more shoving towards the open gates.
The arena reached, and exceeded, capacity within an hour of opening. It also broke a new attendance record with a whopping 11,355 people, transcending the previous arena record by 100, and the 2024-2025 season record by 164, according to Mary Howard, the University Athletics Association’s senior associate athletics director.
Giselle Leon, a 19-year-old UF applied physiology and kinesiology freshman, watched the game from the arena and felt the nerves. Despite a game that could take years off a Florida fan’s life, Leon felt the Gators would make it out alive.
“It’s going to be a close game, which I’m worried about, but we’re going to come on top, we always do,” she said. “We’re a second half team.”
But even she took to the streets following the game. Earlier in the day, Gainesville and UF took a peculiar safety precaution: coating telephone and lamp posts in Pam cooking spray.
Leon wasn’t discouraged by this.
“I know those poles are greased, but they can’t stop me,” she said.
Gators fans of all ages showed out to support the team, and for some, there was more than one reason to celebrate. Two lifelong best friends, 67-year-old Paul Hale and Vince Ionata, spent their 50-year friend anniversary watching the sport that brought them together half a century ago.
Both friends graduated from UF in 1980, where over the course of their college years, they watched the construction of the O’Connell center take place. On Monday, they sat in it together to watch Florida bring home the hardware.
When they were students, they bonded over their love for sports while watching UF basketball games in Alligator Alley.
Now, while the amount of people watching UF’s basketball games has grown exponentially, the feeling Hale and Vince get when they watch their favorite team advance in the national championships is entirely the same, they said.
“When you come back to Gainesville, it’s like coming home again, and you go on a time warp,” Hale said. “You just become ageless. I’m a hardcore Gator basketball fan.”
As students rushed the court in the arena and more ran for the streets in Midtown, lots of things were in the air — beer, champagne, fireworks, flags and even a few people crowd surfing. Perhaps most notably blowing in the wind were the chants: “It’s great to be a Florida Gator,” “Walter Clayton” and “F*ck you, Houston.”
But one thing, finally, wasn’t up in the air: A national championship title. It was coming home after 18 long years.
This is an Alligator Staff report.
