SAN ANTONIO – The chalkboard in the Houston Cougars postgame locker room Saturday night says it all:
35-4.
1 more.
Nearby, some of the Cougars are trying to explain what just happened, and what might be ahead.
“We set goals for ourselves early in the year and a national championship was one of them,” guard Milos Uzan is saying. He was an Oklahoma Sooner last season and mentions his first transfer portal call with Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. “The first thing when we got on the phone, he told me a lot of teams are trying to get into the tournament, we’re trying to win it.
“You’ve always got to have belief. I think that’s something this team has.”
Nearby, guard Terrance Arceneaux is discussing the past three living-on-the-edge weeks for Houston. Outlasting Gonzaga. The winning inbounds play in the final seconds against Purdue. And then Saturday, when the Cougars were like a grand piano that fell on Duke’s heads, sealed at the line by a guy who made himself a better free throw by making 150 a day.
“If this keeps happening,” Arceneaux says, “I feel like this is the year for us.”
1 more.
That means Florida Monday night in the national championship game, and the chance to accomplish something this program has chased for so long. After Saturday, when Houston erased a nine-point Duke lead in the last 125 seconds, who can doubt there might be something magical afoot?
In his post-game media session, Sampson is describing his team.
“It took us a while to become who we are. At some point, if you have a culture . . .quitting is not part of the deal. We’re not going to quit. We’re just going to play better.”
J’Wan Roberts, one of the heroes of the night and the Cougars elder statesman who has been around for six years, is answering a question about how nobody expected this to end with Duke going home. “Everyone has an opinion. They can say what they want to say. When you put 40 minutes on the clock and you put Houston against whoever, they’re going to get our best shot. We don’t have to be mentioned in the greats or this and that. We’ll take the underdog spot and we’ll just do what we do.”
Look at what they did Saturday . . .
The scoreboard told the bottom line.
Houston 70, Duke 67.
And yet, so much was left to wonder about.
What just happened?
Duke was strong. Duke was poised. Duke was rolling along with Cooper Flagg and his 27 points, leading nearly all night – by 14 with just over eight minutes to go, still by nine as the clock closed on two minutes, still by seven at 1:26.
And then came the last 60 seconds.
In one minute, everything changed, In one minute, the Cooper Flagg era was likely over. In one minute Duke was done. In one minute, the Houston Cougars had the kind of Final Four victory they’ve never had in their history, and could feel free to wonder about the void that has tormented them through nearly six decades and six Final Fours . . . has their time come, at long last?
What just happened?
With 10:31 left, Flagg hit a jump shot to give the Blue Devils a 13-point lead. They would make one more field goal the entire game.
They were still up six with 40 seconds left. Then, for Duke, the Alamodome turned into the Alamo. An Emanuel Sharp 3-pointer for Houston and a Blue Devils turnover against the press. A follow-up dunk by Joseph Tugler and a missed Duke free throw. A Flagg foul trying to rebound that led to two Roberts free throws for a 68-67 lead. Seven Houston points in 14 seconds.
Finally, a missed Flagg pull-up jumper, two more Houston points from the line, and a last-ditch Duke play that didn’t work since Christian Laettner was nowhere in the building.
What just happened?
Duke led the nation in average victory margin this season and had won 22 games by at least 20 points. Not a lot of tight finishes on that resume and the Houston Cougars knew it.
“They don’t have many late-game pressure games like that,” Uzan said. “Once we got it close and were able to start pressing them, you could definitely tell.”
The Blue Devils had only seven turnovers but two were in the final 1:39 and were fatal.
“It’s hard to process still,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer would say later. “You go from some of the most special moments in the tournament to the most heartbreaking loss. I’m not about to feel sorry for one second. These guys have done an incredible job. It’s heartbreaking. It’s incredibly disappointing. There’s a lot of pain that comes with this. That’s what the tournament is all about. You’re an inch away from the national championship game.”
And then you’re light years.
If it is any consolation to Scheyer, much the same thing happened to Mike Krzyzewski in this town. The Blue Devils were up eight on Connecticut with under four minutes left in their 2004 Final Four game here, but the Huskies went on a 12-0 sprint to grab the game by a point.
“We thought we were the best team,” Scheyer said. “The best team tonight was Houston.”
Turns out this NCAA tournament did have a couple of surprises up its proverbial sleeve after all. This was not exactly UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson but Auburn had been the top seed in the entire NCAA tournament and Duke had been the No. 1 team in the Associated Press and NET rankings and the presumed favorite here. Neither will be playing Monday night for the national championship.
Auburn could not hold a nine-point lead over Florida in the second half. Duke could not hold a 14-point lead over Houston in the last eight minutes. So we have a very different championship game, when the so-far unstoppable Walter Clayton Jr. from Florida will try his hot hand against the Houston defense.
The Gators have two national championship trophies back in Gainesville and yearn to join the hallowed 2006-07 teams. “We’re just really prideful and proud of the fact that Florida basketball obviously has some very high-level kind of gatekeepers,” coach Todd Golden said. “We feel like we can kind of become part of that family.”
There are no championship trophies back in Houston. Just the memories of coming close.
Sampson is talking about missed free throws, specifically in last year’s three-point loss in the Sweet 16 to Duke when the Cougars were 9-for-17, and Roberts was 3-for-8. The same Roberts who stood at the line Saturday night with 19 seconds showing and calmly buried both to put Houston ahead to stay. After each make, he turned to the Houston crowd and used his arms to tell them to hold it down. Nothing was certain yet.
“Even though we only lost four games all year, the free throw line impacted two of those,” Sampson is saying. “So we had our kids make 150 free throws seven days a week. I don’t think J’Wan missed a day from June 2nd till we left on Wednesday. We left on Wednesday, right? So Tuesday night I looked at what he shot from the free-throw line with his 150 makes. He shot 87 percent. When he started this, he was at 66.
“(For) that moment tonight when everybody was watching, he prepared himself when nobody was watching.”
Roberts agrees. “Like coach said, I shoot 150 every night. I don’t treat those two free throws any different than if I’m in there by myself.”
In the locker room, Arceneaux is saying how great it is that Roberts had such a role at the end, not only with the free throws but helping to defend Flagg’s final miss – likely the last college shot of Cooper Flagg’s life.
“It means everything for him. He’s been here and he’s stuck it out so I’m glad he’s the one making plays for us. He deserves it.”
Sampson is dissecting the box score before he leaves for the night. He notes the 26 points by L.J. Cryer, who kept the Cougars in the game early. The 18 offensive rebounds for Houston. And while Flagg might have had 19 of his 27 points in the second half, everyone else in a Duke uniform had only 14. “Cooper was not going to beat us by himself,” Sampson says.
In the end, Sampson’s guys have done just what he had asked them to do, and trained them to do.
“No one loses at anything as long as you don’t quit,” he is saying. “You quit, then I don’t care, you lost.”
His players have heard him. You could tell by the quiet coming from the Duke locker room.
