College BasketballCollege BasketballAhead of what could be one of the best semifinal rounds in recent March Madness memory, here are the factors that could decide Florida vs. Auburn and Duke vs. Houston
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By Steven RuizApril 3, 3:57 pm UTC • 8 min
After two relatively dull weeks of March Madness, the 2025 men’s tournament has given us a dream Final Four. The games still have to be played, but on paper, this is one of the best semifinal fields in recent memory.
Here are the 10 best KenPom teams ever (ratings date back to ’96-97). Four of them are playing Saturday in San Antonio. Maybe the most loaded Final Four ever? This is downright ridiculous. A combined 135-16. pic.twitter.com/920CSBQCiY
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 30, 2025
Duke, Houston, Auburn, and Florida have been the four best teams all season and have separated themselves from the pack even further over the past two months. While the tournament has been something of a disappointment overall, we will at least be getting a satisfying ending.
Led by superstar Cooper Flagg, the Blue Devils are the runaway favorites to win it all, but they have a tricky bout with Houston standing between them and Monday’s title game. On the other side of the bracket, we have an all-SEC battle between the regular-season champs (Auburn) and the conference tournament winners (Florida). It’s also a rematch of a regular-season game that went Florida’s way. Each of these teams is loaded with star talent, but subtler matchups could decide who advances. Here are the keys to each of the games in Saturday’s mouthwatering doubleheader.
Welcome to the tournament, Johni Broome. After the National Player of the Year candidate scrounged up just 22 total points over the first two rounds, he went for another 22 in a win over Michigan and 25 against Michigan State. Broome really got it going against the Spartans. He torched his matchup, Jaxon Kohler, for 11 points in the first 10 minutes of the game, and he forced Tom Izzo to make an adjustment.
Unfortunately for Izzo, no one else on his team could guard Broome, either. Broome did suffer a shoulder injury in the second half of that Elite Eight game, as he came down awkwardly after defending a Michigan State shot attempt. He eventually returned and even hit a 3, but he has missed two practices this week. Auburn coach Bruce Pearl says that he expects Broome to play on Saturday; he just likely won’t be at 100 percent.
The fact that Broome injured his right arm is the (really thin) silver lining here. He’s a lefty, and in a reverse Zoolander paradox, he can only go left. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but Broome tries to get to his left hand whenever possible, and opponents like to overplay that side to force him to drive right. That was Florida’s game plan in the first matchup between these teams, a 90-81 road win for the Gators in February. On an early possession in that game, Florida’s Alex Condon tried to prevent Broome from getting to his left hand, but Broome got the shot off anyway.
Still, Condon stuck to the plan, and although he couldn’t keep Broome from getting back to his left, he did make him work hard to get there.
Then, in the second half, Condon finally did force Broome to use his right hand. And below, you can see why Broome avoids using it as much as possible. The Auburn star finished the game with 18 points on 19 shots and missed his fair share of bunnies around the rim.
Broome has to make these shots if Auburn is going to keep up with a red-hot Florida team. The Gators didn’t have an answer for Texas Tech’s Darrion Williams in their Elite Eight matchup. They were able to bother JT Toppin, another lefty, but he’s more of a finesse player on the block. Condon doesn’t have the strength to keep Broome from getting deep into the paint. He will know to guard against the lefty hook, but if Broome can hit them anyway, Auburn will have a good shot at avenging that February loss and moving on to the national championship game.
It feels foolish not to say that Walter Clayton Jr. is Auburn’s top concern after his convincing Steph Curry impression over the first two weekends of the tournament. I mean, he put away the Red Raiders with a 30-piece that was capped off by this absurd shot:
But in the words of Paul George, that’s a bad shot. I don’t care what anybody says. And that applies to many of the 3-pointers Clayton has put through the net during Florida’s March run. He takes shots that would be considered bad for other players and makes them with stunning consistency.
Imagine that you’re Pearl reviewing the tape of the first game against Florida, and you come across this shit:
How do you adjust to that? You don’t. You just accept that Clayton will get his shots up, and some of them will go in no matter how good the defense is. You just cope with that reality by repeating this mantra: That’s a bad shot, I don’t care what anybody says … that’s a bad shot, I don’t care what anybody says … that’s a bad shot, I don’t care what anybody says.
Divine intervention from the brick gods would be the only way to slow Clayton down, but he won’t beat Auburn on his own. The Tigers can withstand a 30-point barrage from the Gators star if they can shut off Florida’s secondary source of half-court offense: the duo of Condon and Haugh. Neither is really a threat on the block, but they can do pretty much anything else you’d want from a modern-day big. Florida coach Todd Golden will let both operate as distributors at the top of the key, where they can throw backdoor passes to cutters and perform dribble handoffs with scoring guards. Though Haugh is the more reliable outside shooter, both can set a screen and pop up for a 3-point shot. And both are strong finishers as roll men, so Florida’s guards can throw them lobs over the top of the defense.
In these teams’ first matchup, Auburn switched its defenders against off-ball screens and cutting actions when Condon and Haugh were playing the role of distributor. That eliminated the players’ passing lanes and forced them to be scorers themselves. Auburn ended up losing the game, but its half-court defense was fine. Transition opportunities were another story: The Tigers offense went cold after a hot start and allowed Florida to play on the break. That was when the Gators ran away with it. If Auburn can slow things down and allow its defense to get set, Florida will have to rely on Condon and Haugh to help Clayton out and generate some offense.
Houston’s Elite Eight win over Tennessee was a mismatch from the tip. We probably should have seen it coming. The Cougars’ no. 1–ranked defense is known for swarming opponents with high, active hands, and as good as Vols point guard Zakai Zeigler is, he’s only 5-foot-9. He struggled with Houston’s length and pressure throughout the game, and that bogged down Tennessee’s offense, which scored just 15 points in the first half.
Houston’s defensive pressure is so overwhelming that opponents often shy away from running ball screens—the most common action at any level of basketball—because they can trigger Houston’s signature traps. The screener’s defender will meet the ball handler and pressure him until he picks up the ball to pass. Then the ball handler’s defender joins in, and both defenders keep their hands high to force a floated pass, which gives Houston’s defense time to react. Handling the ball against Houston is a very claustrophobic experience—especially for shorter players.
That shouldn’t be a concern for Duke, though. The Blue Devils are the country’s tallest team, per KenPom. They don’t have a player under 6-foot-6 in the starting five, and their shortest bench guy is 6-foot-5 Caleb Foster. The two lead ball handlers, Sion James and Tyrese Proctor, both stand at 6-foot-6. And if they’re not tall enough to handle Houston’s on-ball pressure, coach Jon Scheyer can dial up ball screens for 6-foot-7 Kon Knueppel or 6-foot-9 Cooper Flagg. Duke has options everywhere.
I would expect to see Flagg in a lot of pick-and-rolls on Saturday night. And he’ll play both roles. As the ball handler, he should be able to see over the Houston defense and deliver passes that send the defenders scrambling.
And if Duke’s ball handlers can pass to him quickly on the roll, he can throw lobs to center Khaman Maluach all day.
Scheyer has endless options when putting together pick-and-roll pairings, and tournament opponents haven’t had much of an answer for any of them. Playing the screens aggressively has been a terrible strategy through the first four rounds. Duke is averaging 1.27 points per possession on all pick-and-roll plays and 1.43 points per possession when the defense commits two players to the ball handler, per Synergy. But Houston’s defensive numbers against pick-and-rolls are equally impressive, so we may have ourselves an unstoppable force vs. an immovable object situation here. Whichever side wins this game within the game will likely move on to the final.
In past seasons, Houston’s offense was powered by its ability to get stops and create turnovers on the defensive end. This year has been different. The addition of point guard Milos Uzan and the improved shooting of LJ Cryer and Emanuel Sharp has raised the floor for the offense. Even when the Cougars have to walk the ball up the court, they’re still generating good shots and knocking them down at a high rate. This is easily the best offensive team Kelvin Sampson has had in Houston.
Their shooting has cooled off a bit in the tournament, but Houston’s offensive rebounding has helped subsidize the scoring. The Cougars have recorded at least 19 second-chance points in each of the past three games. And easy scoring chances will be tough to find against Duke’s defense if it can get set—so second-chance offense may become Houston’s most reliable means of generating points.
Duke has been good on the defensive glass throughout the season, but Houston will present a unique challenge. Joseph Tugler and J’Wan Roberts refuse to be boxed out by opponents. It’s like watching someone try to buckle an unruly toddler into a car seat. And even when the defense does get bodies on those two, they’ll just stretch out their long arms and spike the ball into the backcourt. It’s been a surprisingly effective method for the Cougars.
So protecting the offensive glass won’t just fall on Duke’s big men. The guards will have to stick tight to their assignments even after the shot goes up—just in case a Houston big is able to swat it out to the perimeter. It will take all five Duke players to keep Roberts and Tugler off the glass, but if the Blue Devils can pull it off, they should cruise to an easy win over the toughest team left in the bracket.
Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.
