Florida beats Houston 65-63 to Win National Championship

Refs Call 4 Fouls in the First Half, 26 in the Second!!!

The other day, we talked about how officiating could have a big impact on the 2025 National Championship game matching #1 seeds Florida and Houston. A quick cut-and-paste of those bullet points…

*Whistle-happy refs will give Florida a +10 free throw advantage that could be tough to overcome.

*Whistle-swallowing refs will keep free throws about even, while allowing Houston’s defenders to stymie what Florida usually does inside.

Refs managed to split the difference with an EXTREME dichotomy that helped Houston build a big lead…then helped Florida rally to create a thriller…

First Half: 4 combined fouls called (3 on Houston, 1 on Florida)

Second Half: 26 combined fouls called (16 on Houston, 10 on Florida)

Florida ended with a +8 advantage in made free throws. Not enough to win comfortably. But, enough to win. Whoever you were rooting for, you were thrilled some of the night, frustrated the rest of the time. Let’s see how the final numbers shook out…

*Florida (-1) beat Houston 65-63

What happened with Treys?

Florida 6/24 (25%), Houston 6/25 (24%)

Can’t get much closer. Trey Bedlam had no impact on the winner. Though, both teams shooting so poorly certainly mattered to Over/Under bettors. If you pencil in a more reasonable 8 makes for each team, that’s an extra 12 points that would have lifted the scoring sum to 140 (against a market total of 140.5). If you bet Under, you can thank all of those misses. In terms of the straight up winner, nice to see a result NOT determined by any sort of outlier differential from three-point land. Both teams had the same bad outlier.

What happened with everything else?

Trey-Less Efficiency: Florida .75, Houston .71

Florida won two-point shooting 52-41% (but Houston had three more makes), free throws 17/21 to 9/14, and rebounding 40-39. Houston won turnovers 13-9, though the edge had been bigger while building a temporary double-digit lead.

I tweeted at halftime that Houston was leading Trey-less efficiency at the time .76 to .52. Gators only had two FT attempts in the first half. Turned the ball over NINE times too. Very hard to be efficient that way! Refs didn’t allow so much physicality in the final 20 minutes. That let Florida’s offense flow more smoothly and earn a bunch of points at the line. Still sluggish for stretches because of missed treys, but not broken down completely.

Let’s see how Monday’s numbers compare to what had been happening earlier in the Big Dance for both teams. I’ll leave out the virtual scrimmages from the 1-16 games. After those…

FLORIDA (last 5 rounds)

Florida .88, UCONN .88 (9-8)

Florida .90, Maryland .81 (11-6)

Florida .92, Texas Tech .80 (9-10)

Florida .86, Auburn .80 (8-7)

Florida .75, Houston .71 (6-6)

Tough slate. Lucky to get past UCONN, Texas Tech, and Houston. But, that’s still 4-0-1 in Trey-less efficiency, and 3-1-1 in made treys. In a Super-league environment, that’s going to give you a chance to win. Somebody had to survive the gauntlet. Coulda been Houston. Coulda been Duke. Heck, it coulda been Auburn if the tourney was played a month earlier. Visible edges vs. other #1 seeds Auburn and Houston when it mattered most. Nobody can say Florida didn’t earn it. Nobody outperformed Florida inside the arc. Only Texas Tech made more treys (barely).

HOUSTON (last 5 rounds)

Houston 1.00, Gonzaga .88 (8-9)

Houston .73, Purdue .73 (9-8)

Houston .84, Tennessee .65 (9-5)

Houston .78, Duke .85 (10-7)

Houston .71, Florida .75 (6-6)

Too many games in the .70’s for this team to be considered a real champion. Lost this stat to both Duke and Florida, going 2-2-1 in those five games (3-1-1 on treys) Definitely championship caliber defense. Even holding Duke to .85 is very good in context. Shooting the trey better this year than in the past helped Houston reach the final. Very clear that Houston couldn’t get enough easy points inside the arc to cut down the nets.

I like how Trey-less efficiency shows you at a glance why Houston wasn’t quite good enough to run the table. It is a shortcut. Deeper dives are going to be more informative. But, this shortcut sure paints an accurate and important picture of overall quality quickly. Then, anyone who wants to dig deeper can do so.

That’s it for this report, and our college basketball coverage this season. Some general topic articles coming this week, along with continuing recaps of Lakers’ games as playoff seed gridlock works itself out. Game recaps and TD/Drive analysis the UFL will be coming unless the league erases itself because nobody’s watching. Looking forward to the start of the NBA Playoffs next week. We’ll have sharps reports for every postseason game, along with stat recaps (no sharps reports in the UFL because it’s a low-limit betting option that sharps are largely avoiding.)

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