Gut Punch.
Houston gets a taste of their own medicine on the biggest stage.
In the 2010 National Championship game, the Butler Bulldogs of the Horizon League were down two points against the vaunted Duke Blue Devils with less than three seconds on the clock. Star player Gordon Hayward raced up the floor after rebounding a missed free throw, while center Matt Howard careened into position to set a screen. Hayward got just enough separation to throw a running half court heave, a prayer that ended up just barely, barely, missing. An all-time March Madness moment that never was, the evil empire surviving by the skin of their teeth against a plucky underdog, the absolute worst way a National Championship game could possibly be lost on the final possession of the game.
Somehow, though, this one feels worse.
At the time, no one realized just how much more devastating, gut-wrenching, agonizing it would be if Gordon Hayward instead had two entire possessions to score a basket in regular half court offense and didn’t even get a shot up.
Houston was just as good of an underdog story, a slow burn rather than that instant fairy tale. In the early 2010s, the Cougars were a basketball backwater, a commuter school with paltry attendance and even shabbier play. That all changed when Kelvin Sampson was hired. Sampson, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina whose father fought the Klan at the Battle of Hayes Pond, spent his early years at Houston walking around the vast perimeters of parking lots with a megaphone trying to give free tickets to any student who would take them. He’s spent the last five seasons in the top 3 of the KenPom rankings. Still, tournament glory has eluded these elite teams, with key injuries sending successive Houston teams out in the Sweet Sixteen after they broke through with 2021’s Final Four appearance.
That all seemed to have changed on Saturday night. After being comfortably paced by a superior Duke team for 38 minutes, Houston’s true colors shined as this gritty group of self-starters rallied to a thunderous comeback victory, shocking the college basketball world and toppling its greatest villain, completing Butler’s mission that seemed oh so close fifteen years before. As Houston ran up a double-digit lead on Florida in the National Championship game, it seemed like college basketball finally had the underdog champion it so desperately wanted in 2010.
There’s no conspiracy here, no easy excuse to let Houston off the hook. Officiating was inconsistent and definitely caused a five point swing early in the game with a missed goaltending call, but Todd Golden had plenty to scream about on Florida’s end as well. Both teams shot about the same from three, Florida even gifted Houston two technical fouls that could’ve easily been avoided. For how much I’ve loved Kelvin Sampson’s teams, for how much I savored Houston dominating the Big XII after years of people attributing their success to the weakness of the AAC Conference, for all of the times that I’ve cackled at repeated offensive rebounds breaking the will of a more “talented” opponent, the Houston Cougars failed to deliver in the biggest moment of their lives. Kelvin Sampson drew up two inexcusably bad plays on the final offensive possessions of the game. Emanuel Sharp turned the ball over twice in situations where he didn’t need to force anything. JoJo Tugler fouled out on an entirely avoidable late lunge. This defeat will haunt every single person involved with it. There will be moments in each of these players’ lives where they are lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with their eyes wide open, replaying it all back through their head and wishing, desperately, with the force of the grieving, that they could just have one moment back.
The beauty of sports is in failure. This isn’t a movie where the deserving heroes are carried off to glory, no matter what. Happy endings are earned, not given. Houston built their entire program on playing harder, stronger, and smarter than anybody else; on Monday night, for just two minutes, they didn’t. Kelvin Sampson is sometimes celebrated or mocked for how hard he coaches his players; he’s the kind of coach that will be up 20 points and find something to be unhappy about, some player to scream at while his team is busy crushing the souls of whatever poor 16 seed drew the Cougars. Surely, the margins of success cannot be that fine, we say. Surely, Kelvin Sampson didn’t need to demand such perfection in every moment from his players.
And yet, here we are. One play. One possession. One dumb foul in the second half. One missed layup in the first half. One bad decision to drive the ball. One bad choice to settle for a jumper. One bad play call. Another that took the ball out of their best scorer’s hands. Two missed free throws from a 90% shooter. Losing track of a screener on a back cut. Missing a dunk. Everything that could possibly be considered a deviation from the perfection that Kelvin Sampson demands at every moment becomes the most important play of the game. Kelvin Sampson lost this game, and yet his coaching might be more vindicated than ever. You have to do all of the little things right in order to make the big things happen. Unfortunately, that includes some terrible offensive play calls down the stretch for Coach Sampson. For a coach as hard on his players as Sampson, that may haunt him and hurt him deeper than anything for any one of his players.
The story, though, isn’t over yet. Emanuel Sharp, Milos Uzan, and National Defensive Player of the Year JoJo Tugler all have eligibility left. Houston brings in three top 25 recruits next season, as Sampson’s ability to turn water into wine, low-ranked recruits into NBA players, has drawn the attention of top prospects who want to take their game to the next level (Houston’s newfound NIL supporters don’t hurt, either). For senior star L.J. Cryer, though, for Mylik Wilson, for, good grief, J’Wan Roberts, a kid from the U.S. Virgin Islands that Kelvin Sampson believed in when no one else did, the road ends here. No recourse, no silver lining. Houston basketball has always been about toughness. The truest show of that toughness will be how they withstand this blow. If there’s one thing Kelvin Sampson’s Houston Cougars can hang their hat on, it’s that ability to take a hit, get knocked down, take a breath, get up, and land an absolute haymaker. After Butler suffered that heart-wrenching last second defeat to Duke, the Bulldogs returned to the National Championship game in 2011. They didn’t win it. If Houston gets put back in the ring, has their foe backed into that corner again, and has Kelvin Sampson screaming in their ear, there’s no one I trust more to take that punch, land that blow, and deliver Houston the National Championship they fought harder than anyone else to even have a shot at.
Next time, Houston will take that shot.