Florida roar back to break Houston hearts and capture third NCAA title

• Gators erase 12-point deficit to beat Cougars 65-63
• UF win third NCAA championship, first since 2007
• Cougars rue incomprehensible' collapse in defeat

The Gators looked cooked. Down 12. Their All-American guard scoreless. The crowd inside a hangar-like 70,000-seat football stadium, just 198 miles down the road from Houston's campus, was a deafening sea of scarlet red.

And yet Florida found a way. In one of the most dramatic NCAA men's championship games in recent memory, the Gators and Walter Clayton Jr overcame Houston's suffocating defense to pull off an astonishing 65-63 victory on Monday night - a national title game thriller not decided until Florida's own defense sealed it at the buzzer.