What Happened on Florida's Final Possessions in NCAA Tournament Loss to Iowa

TAMPA-- The Florida Gators lost Sunday's Round of 32 game to Iowa for many reasons. Its final defensive stand and offensive possession of the season will remain the most glaring and the toughest to swallow.

Battling back from a double-digit deficit, Florida led 72-70 in the final seconds after Isaiah Brown went 1-for-2 at the free throw line. Iowa retained possession after a Florida timeout.

During the break, head coach Todd Golden and his staff devised a plan.

“The idea was to keep the ball out of Bennett's (Stirtz) hands, let him throw it to somebody else. So we wanted a face guard and throw it to somebody else and then take a foul and put one of their role players in a pressure situation," he said.

Should Florida have succeeded, the best-case scenario was a missed free throw, and the Gators advance to the Sweet 16. The worst-case scenario was two made free throws with Florida still having the final offensive possession. Even if they didn't score, the Gators would enter overtime with momentum and the crowd advantage.

Instead, the wheels quickly became unraveled.

Stritz, receiving the inbound, beat Florida guard Boogie Fland and created a two-on-one situation in favor of the Hawkeyes with Alvaro Folgueiras left wide-open in the corner. Stirtz saw him, hit him, and Folgueiras nailed a 3-pointer to take the lead with four seconds left.

"We tried to trap a lot," Fland recalled to Florida Gators on SI. "I was told to chase... They got ahead of steam, pushed the ball. It was a disadvantage. Two-on-one, made the right play, and we'd rather the person in the corner to take the shot. I feel like whoever's in the corner, they made the right decision."

ARE. YOU. JOKING.

IOWA LEADS. THIS IS MARCH. #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/sNDHTqaGj1
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 23, 2026

Golden saw it similarly.

“We just didn't make a good enough play off the ball there to stop him from getting down the court, and then we had to make a split-second decision and we just didn't make the right one," Golden said. "Again, I think we had a good plan in terms of what we were trying to do, but we didn't execute it very well. They still had to step up and make a tough shot in a big moment, and they did that.”

Iowa immediately called a timeout, and quickly needing the move on after the defensive lapse, Golden and his staff devised a plan for the offense: Xaivian Lee would quickly drive to the basket, with Thomas Haugh also down low. If the shot is there, Lee takes it, hoping to either score or draw a foul. If it's not, the reliable Haugh is waiting.

Instead, Lee passed up the shot to dish it to Haugh. Haugh, unable to cleanly catch it, fumbled, and the clock expired without the Gators ever getting up a shot.

After the game, Golden said that he would have preferred Lee to "get to the rim on that" and thought that he had a "good advantage" on the defender.

"We've got to live with the results on that, but I thought he did a good job getting around his guy," Golden said. I would have loved to have seen him go finish it."

Lee second-guessed himself in the postgame press conference.

“Maybe I could have shot a floater or pull up or something," Lee said. "I was going pretty fast, and I thought I had time for the dunk in, but I don't know.”

IT'S ALL OVER! THE CHAMPS GO DOWN 🤯

IOWA IS HEADED TO THE SWEET 16! 😱 #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/I7DldUMrjD
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 23, 2026

Those two possessions, albeit the most notable due to the decision-making by both the staff and the players, were also a microcosm of the struggles the Gators had on Sunday night. Florida's bigs were limited early in the game, while Iowa had control for most of the contest. It did not help that Florida went on multiple multi-minute field goal droughts, while missed free throws, even if not extreme, proved costly in a one-point loss.

“I feel like personally I wasn't imposed by their physicality at all,” Alex Condon said. “I was happy with that side of things. I think they just hit more shots down the stretch. They were unselfish, they handled our press well, but they just hit more shots down the stretch."

It's also only ironic the way Florida lost after last year's title, a game ultimately won on a defensive possession with a nice close-out to force an abandoned 3-point shot. A year after beating Houston after the Cougars failed to get off a final shot, Florida lost in the Round of 32 after failing to get off a shot in the final possession.

Hindsight will always be 20/20, and the decisions, specifically the one of the defensive possession, have already begun to garner criticism.

Analyst and NBA legend Charles Barkley called it "just one of the worst defensive calls" during an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show on Monday. Program legend and "Run It Back" host Chandler Parsons said he will "never understand" why Florida did a full-court press while leading.

also interesting... Jonathan Safir, Florida assistant, created a guide for fouling when leading with KenPom in 2020.

If Florida had fouled Stirtz, it wouldn't have been the right decision according to Safir and Ken's chart: pic.twitter.com/nfVUTqyc9t
— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) March 23, 2026

What's in the past now cannot be changed, and all Florida can do now and learn from it and move on.
Now experiencing the opposite end of March, Florida enters the offseason waiting on decisions from its draft-eligible players and a new motivation heading into 2027.

"Just a tough way to go out," Golden said. "... We'll be thinking about this one for a while."