2024-25 Year in Review, Part 2

Last Updated: July 2, 2025By

ICYM: Top 10 team performances of 2024-25
 
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – It’s never easy to single out and pare down the dozens upon dozens of outstanding individual displays of a Florida athletic season into one short list, but we try to do our best.
 
Here’s our look back at some of their most memorable moments of 2024-25. 
 
We’ll do it again in ’25-26. 
 
In the interim, have a great summer, Gators, and we’ll see you back in August. 

10) Walton’s Grand Prize 

Tim Walton celebrates a remarkable victory milestone.

On the last day of February, UF knocked around Samford for a 9-1 victory that from a 20,000-foot view of the softball season would look like just another routine win over a non-league opponent. 
 
Except that it marked Coach Tim Walton’s 1,000 victory as coach at Florida. 
 
Walton came to Florida in 2006, after three seasons at Wichita State (and before that three seasons as an assistant at Oklahoma), won his first game on Feb. 11 that year, and in his third season had the Gators in the first Women’s College World Series in program history; the first of many, of course. 
 
He became one of just a handful of coaches in NCAA women’s softball to reach the 1,000 mark with one school – Walton’s 1,151 career wins rank eighth among active Division I coaches – and at just 52 should have a bunch more victories (and milestones) in his future. 

 

9) Seismic Sidelines Switches

For the first time since 1990, someone other than Mary Wise is coaching the UF volleyball team. 

 

Per Nilsson (above), by way of Pepperdine, took over for four-time NCAA champion Roland Thornqvist in October.

Over a 25-year span from 1992 to 2017 the UF women’s tennis team won seven national championships and did so with just two coaches. Regarding the former, the bracketing actually extended 40 years (from 1985 to 2024) and included 25 conference titles, though none since 2016.
 
Enter Per Nilsson, by way of Pepperdine, to try to jumpstart the stagnation of women’s tennis after the surprising resignation of Roland Thornqvist in October of 2024. Nilsson, 52, won every West Coast Conference regular-season and tournament title over his 10 seasons in Malibu, California, reached the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals seven times, the semifinals twice and played for the national championships in 2021. Before that he was men’s coach for seven seasons at Mississippi State, so he came in with a knowledge of the SEC. 
 
Nilsson’s first UF team went 9-14, including 4-11 in league play, but he inherited a true rebuild job – after the athletic year had begun – so it was always going to be an uphill climb. Check back next year.

Ryan Theis’s arrival to Florida was that of a more conventional coaching change than what Nilsson had to deal with – Theis came during the actual offseason – but his task will be monumental in its own right. 

 

Over her 38 Hall-of-Fame career seasons, Mary Wise never won a national championship, but the imprint she left on the program (25 SEC titles, 31 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, eight Final Fours) will be an ambitious bar for Theis and his Gators to reach. 

 

Theis came by way of 11 seasons at Marquette, where he went 258-87, won three Big East regular-season titles, led the program to 10 NCAA tournaments and advanced to the regional round three times, including in 2024. He went to Marquette after seven seasons at Ohio U, where he won four Mid-American Conference championships that resulted in four automatic NCAA berths. 

 

Before that, though, Theis spent two seasons (2006-07) as offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator alongside Wise, with whom he went 59-6 over those two seasons, including 38-2 in SEC play on the way to a pair of league championships. 

 

So, yeah, he understands about expectations. 

8) Fresh Impact 

Point guard Liv McGill broke the women’s basketball freshman scoring record that stood for 48 years

When point guard Liv McGill, the No. 7-ranked player in the nation out of Minneapolis, signed with Florida she instantly became the highest-rated prospect in the history of the women’s basketball program. 
 
No sooner did McGill get to campus had Coach Kelly Rae Finley handed her rookie the ball and turned her loose. 
 
The 5-foot-9 McGill not only started all 37 games for the Gators, but led the team in scoring (16.5 points per game), assists (5.2), steals (2.1), minutes (31.0) and finished second in rebounding (4.6). In just her fourth SEC game, McGill went to Missouri and had a box score-stuffing performance of 21 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists for the program’s first triple-double since Delicia Washington went for 12, 12 and 10 against Savannah State in 2017. 
 
When her team’s season was done – with a loss to Minnesota in her hometown, no less – McGill had totaled 611 points, smashing the team record for a freshman set nearly a half-century ago when Quientella Bonner totaled 489 points in 1977. 

7) Davies Keys Final Four Re-Lax 

Junior midfielder Kaitlyn Davies on the attack.

Depending on the outlet, the UF lacrosse squad had a handful of worthy honorees making first-, second- and third-team All-America lists (plus a few honorable mentions) after reaching the Final Four for a second consecutive season. 

The best of the lot just may have been midfielder Kaitlyn Davies, whose goal with 1:35 to play in double-overtime beat Stanford 13-12 and propelled the Gators into the national quarterfinals.

Davies, the junior from Wayne, New Jersey, started all 22 games, posted 51 goals to go with eight assists, 34 ground balls, 20 forced turnovers and 48 draw controls on the way to being named Big 12 Midfielder of the Year and a USA Lacrosse Second-Team All American. 

The Gators’ team captain had nine hat tricks on the season and was the first UF midfielder to total 50 or more goals in a season since Shannon Kavanaugh in 2021. 

6) An Eye-Raising First  

Julian Smith won a race no man in UF swimming history had ever won at the NCAA meet. 

UF established a swimming and diving team in 1930. Men only, of course. That’s just the way it was.

The first NCAA national championship meet was staged in 1937 and in the nearly 90-year history of the event the Gators have won 72 races at the championships — that ranks eighth nationally — but senior Julian Smith, out of St. Augustine, Florida, became the program’s first champ in the 100-meter breast. 

After winning 2025 Male Swimmer of the Year at the SEC Championships in Athens, Smith went to nationals and ripped a NCAA-record time of 49.51 and exited his senior seasons as a 16-time All American. 

More on him below. 

5) Clemons’ Leap Year

 

To say it was an outlier of a season for UF track and field would be like saying the universe is somewhat vast. It was just last year, Coach Mike Holloway’s program captured its 12th NCAA men’s title and finished second on the women’s side, giving the man they call “Mouse” 14 national championships since 2010. 
 
In 2025, however, the Gators struggled to score team points, but fifth-year senior Malcolm Clemons, a 2024 Olympian in the long jump, was not to be denied in his final collegiate meet. His leap of 26 feet, 4.5 inches came on his first attempt and held up over the next five rounds to give Clemons his first NCAA individual crown and Florida its first long-jump champion in eight years. 
 
Clemons did not even need to make a final attempt, but nonetheless lined up and took off on his sprint for the pit, only to run through the sand – arms raised – and launch into on a victory lap inside Hayward Field at Eugene, Oregon. 

 

4) Liendo Captures Two Titles 

More hardware for Canadian sensation Josh Liendo.

The addition of Texas to the SEC put a stop to the dominant run of 12 consecutive conference championship for the Florida men’s swimming team. 
 
The arrival of the Longhorns did nothing to stop 2024 Olympic silver medalist Josh Liendo. 
 
Liendo, the junior and two-time Olympian from Scarborough, Canada, won two of the four races won by the Gators at the 2025 NCAA Championships at Federal Way, Washington. Liendo went to the meet as the two-time reigning champion in the 100-meter freestyle and made it three a row. He also defended his crown in the 100 butterfly, giving the 19-time All American five titles for his career. 
 
Liendo and the aforementioned Smith went on to join forces with sophomore Jonny Marshall and freshman Alexander Painter to win the 400 medley relay in a meet-record time of 2:56:10, as the Gators finished fourth in the team standings. Liendo, though, left the Pacific Northwest with three national champions and 19 career All-America honors, with another year to go. 

 

3) A New Hope

Freshman quarterback DJ Lagway had an eye-opening, eye-toward-the-future freshman season.  

Finally … a quarterback. 
 
It had been a minute – more like two decades of minutes – that Florida had put a guy under center who created the buzz that true freshman DJ Lagway sent through the football program last season. It didn’t happen right away. And Lagway’s season wasn’t without its bumps in the rookie road. But once the 6-foot-3, 240-pounder from Willis, Texas had the position all to himself late in the season that the possibilities for the future unfolded before the fanbase’s eyes with entrancing previews to coming attractions. 
 
When Lagway threw for 456 yards and three touchdowns in the second week against Samford it was quite the eye-opener, but the Bulldogs were an undermanned FCS team. When sixth-year starter Graham Mertz was lost for the season with a knee injury at Tennessee, Lagway’s 27-yard rocket to Chimere Dike with 27 seconds to play put the game into overtime. And the Gators were actually beating Georgia (after Lagway’s 43-yard strike to Jaden Mizell) when Lagway left the game for good with a hamstring injury that sidelined him the following week at No. 5 Texas and left the offense to a walk-on. 
 
Lagway, through, returned and was the QB of record when the Gators defeated No. 21 LSU and No. 8 Ole Miss at home, smashed Florida State on the road in the regular-season finale, then went 22 of 35 for 305 yards and a touchdown in a MVP performance and win over Tulane in the Gasparilla Bowl to exit the year on a four-game winning streak that sent Billy Napier and his fourth-year program into an offseason (and on a roll into the summer of silly-talk season) with a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate as the face of a program with different, more pressure-packed expectations into 2025. 
 
 
2) Softball’s Fab Freshman
 



Taylor Shumaker didn’t waste much time announcing herself to the adoring crowd at Pressly Stadium. Her second at-bat as a collegian, Shumaker barreled up a North Florida pitch and parked it over the opposite-field fence in left field for her first home run as a Gator. 
 
There would be more such moments. A lot more. 
 
Shumaker, the freshman from Fullerton, California and latest prep prodigy to be lured cross-country by Walton, started all 65 games, hit .389 and tied the program single-season record for home runs (22) and RBI (86), demonstrating uncanny power to all fields, and helping guide the Gators back to the Women’s College World Series. 
 
At the WCWS welcome banquet in Oklahoma City, Shumaker was announced as the 2025 National Fastpitch Coaches Association Freshman of the Year. 
 
Florida bowed out quickly in OKC, losing their first two games, with Shumaker collecting just two infield hits and falling short of breaking those homer and RBI records. She has three more years to make up for it. Here’s betting she will.
 
 
1) Walt the Wonderful
 

The last UF athlete to so distinguished themself on the national stage in such a high-profile sport the way senior point guard Walter Clayton Jr. did in the NCAA Tournament was … just calling it like it is … Tim Tebow. 
 
Do not mistake the above statement as a slight toward Alijah Martin or Will Richard or Thomas Haugh or any of the rest. It’s just that Clayton was that good – that special – and every one of his teammates understood the straw that stirred the dizzying orange and blue drink that was Florida men’s basketball during the 2024-25 season. 
 
Over the four weeks after he was named the first first-team All American in program history, Clayton hit the biggest shots at the most pivotal had-to-have-them moments, as the Gators rampaged over three ranked teams to win their first SEC Tournament title in 11 years, then navigated a quartet of second-half deficits in the NCAA Tournament. 
 
In defeating Texas Tech in the West Region title game, UF erased a nine-point deficit with less than three minutes left behind Clayton’s career-high 30 points. The Gators trailed No. 1-seed Auburn by nine in the second half, but rallied to victory, with Clayton pouring in a career-high 34 to become the first player since Larry Bird in 1979 to tally at least 30 points in a regional final and Final Four in succession. 
 
In the NCAA championship against 1-seed Houston, with the top defense in the country, Clayton went scoreless through the first 25 minutes (and without a field goal through 32 minutes), but dished seven assists to keep his team in it. The Gators trailed by 12 in the second half, but Clayton scored all 11 of his points down the stretch to key the comeback and eventual 67-65 victory, giving UF its first title since Billy Donovan’s famous back-to-back teams of ’06-07. 
 
Clayton, whose 713 points were a single-season team record, was named MVP of the SEC Tournament, the West Region and Final Four. He averaged 18.3 points on the season, including 22.3 – on 45-percent shooting from the 3-point line – in the six NCAA Tournament games.
 
He won’t get a statue, but a case can be made that Clayton is the greatest player in UF basketball history. His exploits certainly made for the greatest (and, at times, improbable) runs in Florida athletic lore.

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu




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