After capping off an outstanding March Madness run with a 65-63 win over Houston in the national championship game on Monday, Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. was named the 2025 NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player.
Clayton, who started his career at Iona but spent his final two seasons with the Gators, averaged 22.3 points, 3.3 assists and 3.3 rebounds across six tournament games.
Clayton has been outstanding all year, averaging 18.5 points per game on his way to being named a Naismith Player of the Year Finalist. In the tournament, he hit another level. He posted 23 points in both the Round of 64 and Round of 32 before putting up 30 points against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight and 34 points against Auburn in the Final Four.
On Monday, Houston came in with a clear plan of shutting down Clayton, and it worked for much of the game. But even though Clayton wasn’t finding the basket as much, scoring just 11 points, he found other ways to contribute, like dishing out seven assists.
“We’ve been saying it all year, our motto is ‘We all can go,” Clayton said. “We’ve got a team full of guys that can go, it ain’t just about me. We got multiple guys that can go get a bucket and do anything, so my team held me down until I was able to put the ball in the basket, so shoutout to them boys.”
Clayton’s journey to stardom has been anything but easy.
Coming out of high school, he received more interest as a football player, landing offers from top programs like Georgia, Tennessee and Florida, per 247Sports. He had far fewer offers for basketball, but ultimately decided to stick with hoops and joined Iona.
After two years playing for Rick Pitino with the Gaels, he hit the transfer portal and returned to his home state to join the Gators ahead of the 2023-24 season.
Now, after leading Florida to its third championship in program history, Clayton’s name is in the history books forever.