SAN ANTONIO – For the past five months, the conversation surrounding college basketball’s best player involved only two names: Duke’s Cooper Flagg and Auburn’s Johni Broome. A third name paced just behind.

On Saturday night, Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. caught all the way up. And unlike the other two, he’ll be playing for a national title Monday night.

Clayton, a unanimous CBS Sports All-America first-team selection, picked the perfect place for the best game of his career. The centerpiece to Florida’s outstanding season logged a personal-best 34 points – 20 in the second half, one crowd-bursting bucket after another – to lift No. 1 seed Florida past No. 1 overall seed Auburn, 79-73, in the 2025 Final Four.

The instantly legendary performance puts Clayton’s name among some of the best to ever do it on college basketball’s biggest stage. He became the first player to drop 30-plus points in a national semifinal since Carmelo Anthony for Syracuse in 2003. Beyond that, he’s the first to log 34-plus points in a Final Four victory since Al Wood of North Carolina in 1981.

As fate would have it, Anthony and two-time Florida national title winning coach Billy Donovan were in the building Saturday night to witness it; both were announced as inductees into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Class of 2025 earlier in the day.

As Anthony and Donovan were honored at halftime, Clayton and Todd Golden’s Gators were in the locker room staring down a 46-38 deficit that came after Auburn played one of its best first halves of the past two months. It was the first time since Feb. 25 against Georgia that Florida was outscored going into the break; all four of its losses this season came when trailing at halftime.

Then the Gators did what they’ve done 17 out of 18 times since Feb. 4: found a way to a win.

Conversely, Auburn lost for the first time this season (26 games) when leading by five-plus points at halftime. It ends the season 0-2 against Florida by a combined margin of 15 points.

Clayton’s gargantuan night continued a Gators voyage through this bracket that’s been more drama-laden than any other team in this tournament.

Saturday was Florida’s third theatric come-from-behind win in five NCAA Tournament games. The first was a trap-door escape against two-time champion UConn in the second round. Against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight, the Gators found a route to survival after trailing by 10 with a little more than five minutes remaining.

“He’s been doing it for us all year, and I’m just really happy for him that he’s finally starting to get the recognition that he deserves,” Golden said of Clayton after the game in a conversation with CBS Sports. “He’s just a great, great young man, great leader, someone that commands a lot of respect from his teammates, and they love him. Does a great job of sharing the sugar and giving a lot of credit to his teammates that put him in that position. And you know when you have a guy like that – that’s a hard worker, that’s coachable and brings great effort every day – it just bleeds through the rest of your program.”

Auburn had a lead as large as nine with 18:30 to go, but Clayton and Florida simply refused to die – opting instead to ascend to a different level.

The senior, by way of Iona, outscored Auburn 10-8 in the final 4:30. For the third time in this tournament, he delivered 10 or more points in the final five minutes of regulation.

“Clayton was the difference,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “He was just flat out the difference. We couldn’t contain him down that end.”

His 34 points on 11-of-18 shooting, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range, made him just the fifth player to ever score 30 points and hit five 3s in the Final Four, joining Villanova’s Donte DiVincenzo (2018), Maryland’s Juan Dixon (2002), Michigan’s Glen Rice (1989) and UNLV’s Freddie Banks (1987).

When the final buzzer sounded, Auburn managed just 27 second-half points, its second-lowest mark of the season. An Auburn team that stood as the sport’s best through the end of January ultimately ran into a team from within its own conference – the nation’s best conference – that was taller, stronger, longer and healthier.

It was fitting for Florida that Donovan was in attendance alongside Anthony and the other Naismith inductees. The Gators are in the national championship game for the fourth time in program history and first since Donovan last took them there in 2007, completing Florida’s back-to-back title run Noah, Al Horford, Taurean Green and Lee Humphrey.