‘Giving up wasn’t one of them’: How Houston’s tenacity surprised Duke

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SAN ANTONIO – On Jon Scheyer’s birthday in 1987, Kelvin Sampson had just been hired as Washington State’s head coach. At this point, he had been an assistant at various stations for nearly a decade.

All the basketball games he won and lost during his four-plus-year career — the ones his teams squandered and saved — taught him a lesson that saved Houston’s season and led the team to its third national championship on Monday night after a miraculous comeback win over Duke in the Final Four.

“We’re doing a great job playing against other teams,” Sampson said after Houston’s 70-67 win over the Blue Devils on Saturday. [Kon Knueppel] He made some tough 3-pointers. Cooper Flagg, Cooper wasn’t going to beat us alone. I felt like we had to hang in there, even when we were down 14. … These guys will confirm to you what I meant in the meeting: ‘Hang in there, hang in there.'”

Yes, there is a technical analysis of what happened on Saturday. Duke’s inbounds error with 31.8 seconds left led to a crucial Joseph Tugler dunk. J’Wan Roberts and L.J. Cryer made important free throws. Flagg’s controversial foul on Roberts also played a role. Duke’s Hail Mary pass with 3.7 seconds left — the team that got its start on Christian Laettner’s Hail Mary three decades ago — failed in the team’s last attempt to avoid one of the worst collapses in Final Four history.

To many observers, Flagg’s 3-pointer in the final minutes gave Duke a nine-point lead and ended Houston’s dream. With 3:03 left, the Blue Devils had a 95.5 percent chance of winning, according to ESPN Research. But Sampson’s mantra lives on.

Hold on, hold on.

Every coach in America boasts about his team’s toughness. Yet it’s a cliché without a concrete barometer. How does one measure a team’s toughness? How does a team actually use it to win games? How does one team get more results than another?

The Cougars answered those questions at 5 a.m. Thursday, just before the hottest days of the Texas summer arrived and long before the bright lights of San Antonio put all the talk of toughness to the test. There the Cougars assembled and completed an intensive VersaClimbers workout. There was no basketball anywhere. Just a bunch of exhausted players chasing a goal time while climbing an imaginary staircase.

“We put in a lot of time at the beginning of the year,” Milos Uzan said. “We feel like we put in a lot of work that other programs in the country didn’t. Some of the setbacks we had at the beginning of the year strengthened cohesion and connection. We believe in that.

Hold on. Hold on.

The Cougars found their strength last year after losing to Duke in the Sweet 16. Sampson didn’t like it. Serious injuries affected the game, but Sampson was more concerned about free throws (they were 9-for-17 that night). After the loss, he required every player on the roster to shoot 150 free throws a night, a practice that continued through Tuesday. If the assistant who counts the trash doesn’t slip a piece of paper with the nightly count under Sampson’s office door every day, he’ll be held accountable. But it was on those nights that Roberts – who hit the crucial free throw against Duke on Saturday – prepared for the biggest moment of his career.

“I wasn’t nervous at all, just because I put in the effort, because I just believed in myself and believed in myself,” Roberts said afterward. “I tried not to be distracted by the size of the stage or the passionate crowd. I just tried to believe in myself, focus on my day job and believe in my work.”

But a game against Kansas earlier this year forced Houston to dig deep and test whether the promise of its culture, heart and drive was real. Sampson scored in his first double-overtime win over the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse in January, with the Cougars trailing by six points but leading with 10 seconds left in the first overtime. Sampson said he used the comeback Saturday to motivate his team.

“Even with [Duke] a 14-point lead, I thought we could have played better,” Sampson said. “I just pleaded with our guys to hang in there. Hang in there. Yeah, I mentioned the Kansas game. I don’t think I had to. Our team is pretty mature.”

Hang in there. Hang in there.

When Sampson preached resilience after Duke led by 14 with 8:17 left, he was speaking to a group of players who believed it—not only because their coach told them so, but because they had lived it themselves. Himself.

Houston, which has the best defense in the country, has lost just one game since Nov. 30. That’s more than four months of perfect basketball. But the Cougars have been through a grueling summer together to prepare for this run. They’ve been prepared for this run with no cameras in the halls and no fans in the stands. They’ve been tested all season to prepare for this run.

Even in the NCAA Tournament, Gonzaga and Purdue were able to challenge them in the final minutes, after which Duke had seemingly insurmountable leads. But those circumstances didn’t scare Sampson and his team.
“Giving up wasn’t part of the deal,” he said. “We’re not giving up. We’re just going to play better.”

Houston was too strong Saturday night, not just because it talked about it but because it actually lived it under Sampson.

“We knew from the beginning that America had chosen Duke,” Uzan said. “As long as the guys in the locker room believed in it, that’s all that mattered. We all believed in it.”