When the Florida Gators won their first men’s basketball national championship in 2006, they immediately followed it up with a second straight title.
In that 2007 repeat season, Florida rolled its way through the season, convincingly defending its crown and achieving something that hadn’t been done since Duke in 1992-93. Entering this season, the Gators felt like they could replicate their past with another championship.
Instead, it took just one game into the Gators’ 2025 title defense for them to learn it’s going to be a whole lot tougher to pull off another string of back-to-back national championships.
No. 3 Florida couldn’t stop No. 13 Arizona in Las Vegas with the Wildcats pulling off a convincing 93-87 win on opening night of the 2025-26 season.
While it was Florida that was the headline of the matchup, the show was stolen by Arizona’s five-star freshman Koa Peat. He had an electric debut for the Wildcats as he dazzled on both sides of the court, putting up a game-high 30 points with seven rebounds and five assists for the Wildcats.
The Gators simply had no answer for him and the rest of Arizona’s high-powered offense, with cold streaks coming as Arizona’s offense got rolling after a slow start. Florida led by 12 points midway through the first half, only for the Wildcats to wake up and take the lead by halftime, which it held onto for the remainder of the game.
With the loss, the Gators are the first defending champion to drop their season opener since Syracuse in 2003.
Why it will be tough for Florida to repeat
It’s only the first game of a four month marathon to the NCAA Tournament, but the result on Monday, Nov. 3 proved how difficult it is in today’s age to achieve back-to-back national championships – even though it was just done two seasons ago.
When Connecticut defended the title 2024, coach Dan Hurley lost his top two scorers, but had a core of key players return from all sides of the court that carried the torch.
Florida coach Todd Golden has a somewhat similar case, with a big-man lineup of Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Thomas Haugh all back. Yet, it was the back court that carried the load, with Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard accounting for 46 points per game.
All of those guys are gone, and their absence was evident against the Wildcats.
Golden replaced his key guards with Boogie Fland from Arkansas and Xaivian Lee from Princeton, but as is expected with even notable transfers, it’s going to take some time for them to mesh with the rest of the team.
Haugh led Florida with 27 points, but Lee and Fland had rather timid debut performances. Lee had 14 points on 5-for-17 shooting, and Fland struggled to find the bucket, making just one shot in the second half to finish with nine points.
It’s a far cry from those back-to-back Florida years, when it had stars Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer still there to run it back. That came at a time where it was common for teams to retain key talent.
Now, the transfer portal and NBA draft make it so challenging for teams to replicate the success achieved just a few months prior. It’s also incredibly tough when Florida has a schedule that includes Arizona, Duke and Connecticut in addition to the gauntlet it will experience in the SEC.
Is Florida’s season over? Far from it. It could very well recover and be a No. 1 seed again in March.
However, the punch the Gators took from the Wildcats is a reminder that it is getting much harder to win it all in two straight years; and the road is only going to get tougher for the defending champs.