Florida wins NCAA title as team with Jewish coach bests Israeli guard in final moments
Houston narrowly misses victory in men’s college basketball tournament; Florida’s Todd Golden was one of three Jewish coaches to lead teams in this year’s Final Four
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The University of Florida Gators won the NCAA basketball championship Monday night with a thrilling comeback win over the University of Houston Cougars, clinching the 65-63 victory with a defensive stop over Houston’s Israeli-American guard Emanuel Sharp in the title game’s closing seconds.
The win for coach Todd Golden’s Gators marks the first time in 40 years that a Jewish coach has led a team to victory in the March Madness men’s college basketball tournament.
Sharp, born in Tel Aviv to former Maccabi player Derrick Sharp, was blocked by Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. from taking a potential game-winning three-pointer with less than five seconds remaining.
With Sharp looking for room, Clayton ran at him. The Houston guard dropped the ball and, unable to pick it up lest he get called for traveling, watched it bounce.
Alex Condon dived on the ball, then flipped it to Clayton, who ran to the opposite free-throw line with the buzzer sounding and tugged his jersey out of his shorts. Next, the court was awash in Gator chomps and orange and blue confetti.
“We guarded them hard and then I saw the ball loose and I just hoped we beat them to the ball,” Golden said.
Houston trailed only 64 seconds all night, and yet fell short of its first national championship.
The tourney had been marked in the Jewish community for the unusually high number of players and coaches with Jewish or Israeli connections among the top four teams to make it to the final rounds, including Duke’s Israeli-American coach Jon Scheyer and Auburn’s Jewish coach Bruce Pearl.
A decade ago, Golden was at Auburn as an assistant to Pearl, who coached him as a player at the Maccabiah Games in 2009. Golden also played professionally in Israel.
YOUR NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: THE FLORIDA GATORS ????????#MarchMadness @GatorsMBK pic.twitter.com/XatLv5x2hm
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) April 8, 2025
The last Jewish coach to take home the collegiate basketball trophy was Larry Brown, who led the Kansas Jayhawks to victory in 1985.
As Golden celebrates the Florida victory, he’s also seen controversy: Earlier this year, multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, prompting a Title IX investigation. The charges were dismissed as Golden had not committed misconduct “within a university program or activity,” the investigators said.
The Times of Israel Community.