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Native ��ѿ��ýan Sean Kelley, the radio voice of University of Florida athletics, not only called the Gators’ victory last week in the men’s college basketball title game but ended up with the championship trophy in his hotel bed.

As a long night of celebrating after the game in San Antonio was winding down in the wee hours, Kelley was in the hotel’s ballroom as the crowd was thinning out.

“My wife and I looked around and realized that it was the two of us, the players and some of the spirit group students who were still left. I thought to myself that I probably better not hand this trophy off to them at this moment,” he said. “I might want to keep this with me until we can all get to the bus in a couple hours.”

So up to the room it went for safekeeping, leading to a photo of Kelley in bed while holding the hardware at 4:45 a.m. — a picture that has made the rounds on social media.

“I wanted to make sure that it got to the bus to get back to Gainesville,” he said.

Kelley, who grew up in the Ballwin-Chesterfield area and attended high school at The Priory and graduated from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, has had a winding path to his current job, including moonlighting as a firefighter while building his sportscasting resume that has included broadcasting the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans and calling games in multiple sports for ESPN Radio before becoming the voice of the Gators in 2022.

He still has occasional assignments for ESPN Radio when his Florida schedule allows them and was on the call Wednesday night for the Miami-Chicago NBA playoffs play-in game. That wrapped up quite a streak for Kelley — it was the 10th consecutive basketball game he broadcast in which the winner either advanced in the tournament he was calling, won the title or was done. That encompassed the Southeastern Conference, NCAA and NBA play-in events.

Fortunately for the Gators, their run of pressure-packed games ended with a victory.

“I still have not quite got my arms around what’s happened,” said Kelley, who was master of ceremonies at the team’s victory celebration in Gainesville. “It was surreal in a lot of ways, and it was such a gift quite frankly because one of the joys of being with the team is sharing in their journey. This particular group was so rare and that they had the talent to win and go on to fulfill a championship dream, but yet there was something about them with regard to the way they loved each other the way they went about their work that you couldn’t help but root for them or you wanted to see them feel some kind of a destiny. To have a front-row seat to that was remarkable and inspiring in a lot of ways.”

He said the team’s celebrations the night they won — the night he ended up with the trophy — wasn’t outrageously wild.

“It was raucous in the sense that there was this joy, it wasn’t like this unfettered party that you see a lot of times at the pro level. It was actually almost kind of like this deep-breath moment, and then just smiling at each other and enjoying each other’s company after that accomplishment.”

He’s back to the NBA playoffs soon for ESPN Radio, albeit no longer with elimination contests as best-of-seven series will be starting. He has Game 1 of the Minnesota-Los Angeles Lakers matchup on Saturday night then Game 2 of the Los Angeles Clippers-Denver pairing on Monday night.

He also calls baseball occasionally for ESPN Radio and would like to get back to ��ѿ��ý for one of those assignments this season.

“Every time I think I’m going to have a break and maybe get back to ��ѿ��ý to see some family and friends, that keeps getting kicked on the road a little bit,” he said. “It will happen eventually. I’m looking forward to that.”