25 Cheers For 25 Years: Inside the Moments That Made Florida 2025 National Champions

Assistant Coach of the Florida Gators Carlin Hartman celebrates during the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship game at Alamodome on April 07, 2025 in San Antonio, Texas. (Photo by Brett Wilhelm/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Inside the Gators locker room in early December, assistant coach Carlin Hartman gathered the entire team around after practice. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scheme. He just asked a question.

“Who’s been to a Final Four? Who’s made a Sweet 16?”

Cooper Bates, the one of team’s student managers, remembers it well.

“It was a pretty cool team moment,” Bates said. “He didn’t make it dramatic. He just kind of went around and asked. And then he said, ‘This is the best team I’ve ever coached.’”

Hartman had been everywhere, high majors, low majors, mid-majors, for two decades. So when he said something like that, it held weight.

It was the moment Bates knew Florida had something real.

“I felt like we were better than last year,” he said. “We were ranked 21st to start, so expectations were already higher. But after the Thanksgiving tournament, when we beat Wake Forest and just kept blowing teams out, I was like… yeah, this is a second weekend team. Maybe more.”

From that point on, Hartman’s voice became a steady heartbeat inside the program. As the team started facing tougher competition, he locked in on two players in particular: Alex Condon and Denzel Aberdeen.

“They were on him pretty hard about Denzel,” Bates said, “because his role was smaller the year before, and now he needed to give us something off the bench. And Carlin kept saying, ‘I’m being hard on you because I don’t want this opportunity to slip away.’”

It wasn’t just yelling and cussing. Hartman was a connector. Bates explained that he pulled guys aside when they were struggling and reassured them.

Bates said Hartman’s urgency and care rubbed off, especially during tight stretches — like during the tournament run.

“That’s the kind of stuff that stuck,” Bates said. “He’s been everywhere, coached great players, and for him to say, ‘This is the best team I’ve ever had’ — that stayed with people. It made you believe it.”

Florida’s title run wasn’t easy. They had to survive a second round thriller with UConn and then did the same against Texas Tech in the Elite Eight.

By the Final Four, Bates’ own role had shifted into something unexpected. During the Houston game, he and a few other managers were tasked with tracking Houston’s play calls in real-time.

“They write all their plays on a whiteboard,” he said. “Our video guy texted me and said, ‘If you see one that ends in CTR, that means it’s a low post catch. Hold up a C.’ So when we saw CTR, we all stood up and just started yelling and throwing up C’s.”

Bates laughed remembering it.

“It was actually insane. My phone was just full of their play calls and timestamps. It was like a covert mission.”

Florida would go on to beat Auburn, then take down Houston in the national championship game. But for those who lived the journey, the defining traits weren’t Walter Clayton Jr’s ridiculous clutch shots or Alijah Martin’s thunderous dunks.

It was preparation, detail, and a belief that came from a love for each other

“This wasn’t about one moment,” Bates said. “It was a a lot of things that added up. Those guys really loved each other and I think that’s an underrated part of it all.”

For all the talent and tactics that powered Florida’s run, it was Hartman’s voice that reminded them who they were and what was at stake.

“This is the best team I’ve ever coached.”

Turns out, he was right.