Houston’s best chance at an NCAA championship slips away in loss to Florida in national title game

SAN ANTONIO — Forty-one minutes after Houston left the floor following their first loss in 66 days, its lockerroom was opened to the media. In the church-like quiet Monday night, you could have heard a chin drop. 

“I’m sorry,” guard Terrance Arceneaux said through tears facing the floor, towel draped over his head. “I can’t do this right now.”

“F—,” a disembodied voice roared from a back room. 

That voice was never identified. Maybe it didn’t matter. Houston had been on such a roll it was almost hard to envision what the Cougars would be like after a loss. As you would expect, it was not good or pleasant or particularly enlightening. 

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Most of those 41 minutes were spent with Cougars crying their eyes out after losing to Florida 65-63 in the national championship game.  

“It was very emotional,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “Going into tonight this team was 35-4. We haven’t lost a game since I don’t know what month it was.”

It was Feb. 1 and since then Houston had won a nation-leading 18 in a row under every kind of condition. Late Monday night, the Cougars seemed destined. They hadn’t lost in regulation since the third game of the season five months ago. 

That destiny was hammered home in the Final Four with the inspiring comeback Saturday against Duke. But the cruel irony was Monday’s result was the direct opposite of that result. 

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Against Duke, the Cougars trailed by 14 with less than 12 minutes to play. In the NCAA Tournament final, Houston was up by 12 with less than 16½ minutes to play. Then, like Duke, the bottom fell out of the Cougars. From that point on the Cougars made only seven field goals, none in the last 2:29.

In fact, the Cougars were able to get off only two shots in the final 2 ½ minutes.  

The Cougars who usually controlled the paint, the tempo and the game saw their season end. Florida took advantage and Cougars everywhere wept. 

The coach who turns 70 in six months thought his team could win if it held Florida to less than 70. It did that, holding the Gators to their second-lowest total of the season. But Florida won a national championship in a game it led for all of 64 seconds. 

Now you have to wonder if Sampson will ever get over the national championship hurdle. Age is probably the biggest factor. Sampson is 69 and made it clear before the game that if the Cougars won, this wouldn’t be a walk-off to retirement. 

But Sampson has been to three Final Fours and one championship game that in the end ripped the soul from his team and maybe the man himself. 

“Not me. I never make it about me …,” Sampson told CBS Sports. “You hope you’ll get back, there’s no guarantees. I appreciate having this opportunity with this team. Just disappointing we didn’t play better down the stretch. I’m more pissed off about that right now.”

Sampson has devised the defense that is annually the best in the country. Sampson was the author of a game plan that held Kahman Maluach,  Duke’s 7-foot-2 freshman NBA Draft lottery pick, to no rebounds for the first time in his career in the Final Four. Sampson was the coach who made the strategic decision not to foul Duke, down six late in Saturday’s semifinal. That essentially was the difference in the game when the Blue Devils couldn’t figure out how to get the ball in. 

He was the man who overruled the discussion in the huddle after Purdue had rallied from 10 down in the Midwest Regional semifinal in front of a pro-Boiler crowd in Indianapolis.

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The play is called “51”. That night against Purdue it was worth a million bucks. 

He was the coach who devised the scheme that held Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. to 11 points, one of his lowest outputs of the season. Had Florida lost, Clayton would have been the goat. Instead, he was the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player. Go figure. 

We already told you what Sampson walked into when he took the job in 2014. We also told you the reason why Houston may have been one of the few jobs available to him. 

Maybe a national championship should have been destined when you consider how the Cougars got here. They are 34-5 in their first two seasons in the Big 12. 

But the frustrating endings are now piling up for Sampson. There was the 2021 national semifinal loss to Baylor in the COVID-19 bubble. 

In 2022, a year after Marcus Sasser helped lead the program to its first Final Four in 37 years, he and teammate Tramon Mark missed most of the season with injuries. With a chance to go back to the Final Four, the Cougars lost in the Elite Eight to Villanova.

In 2023, Sasser hurt his groin in the American Athletic Conference Tournament. The Cougars lost in the Sweet 16.

Last season, Jamal Shead, the Big 12 Player of the Year, famously suffered an ankle injury in a Sweet 16 loss to Duke. 

Will Sampson ever get to the promised land?

“This was the year right here,” Houston forward J’Wan Roberts said. “Shit, I feel like he had a chance to do it but we didn’t. How much ever longer that he is here I pray that he has another opportunity, a chance to get back to Monday night again.”

The box score didn’t make sense from a Houston perspective. In the tournament, Houston held opponents to a combined 125 points below their scoring average. Florida scored 25 less than its 85.3-point average on Monday. The Gators turned the ball over at least 12 times in all six tournament games. 

The Cougars’ fabled defense forced Florida into 13 turnovers on Monday. The Gators’ guards, Clayton and Alijah Martin, shot a combined 5 for 20. 

Clayton shot only 3 of 10 from the field, but also made the biggest defensive play of the game forcing Emanuel Sharp to double clutch on what would have been a game-winning 3-pointer with the final seconds ticking away. Sharp was forced to drop the ball after Clayton rose to block his shot. Instead of picking up the ball and being called for traveling, Sharp let the ball bounce away. The Gators lunged for the loose ball and the clock ran out on Houston’s season.  

Clayton made it a point to congratulate Sampson. 

“The biggest message [to the team] was, be disappointed that you lost,” Sampson said, “and it was very emotional for everybody — but do not be disappointed in your effort.”

Sharp never did come out to speak to reporters. 

“We had to soak in what just happened and realize that the season was over,” Roberts said. 

In the end, there were a lot of glassy eyes in that sad, sad lockerroom. They were either about to cry or were recovering from doing just that. 

A man who was one victory shy of 800 in his 36-year career could only shake his head. The only message written on Houston’s whiteboard  was the final record. 

“35-5”.

The Cougars didn’t need to be reminded.