For the better part of 40 minutes Monday night, an elusive championship was in Houston’s and head coach Kelvin Sampson’s grasp.
A victory would have have marked a breakthrough for a program and a coach who took the championship stage in San Antonio on similar trajectories.
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Houston, in its seventh Final Four, is a program with a rich history and a proud lineage that features Phi Slama Jama, Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Elvin Hayes. It’s a history that does not include an NCAA championship.
Sampson entered Monday’s game as one of the winningest coaches of his generation and a respected leader who’s now taken two programs to three Final Fours and coached in 50 previous NCAA tournament games. His programs are mainstays in the second weekend of the tournament and beyond. But like the program he now presides over, Sampson does not have an NCAA championship.
And after Florida’s 65-63 win, Houston and Sampson remain on that search for their breakthrough titles.
Kelvin Sampson and Houston each came excruciatingly close to their first NCAA championship Monday night.
(Jamie Schwaberow via Getty Images)
For most of the game Monday night, it looked like Houston and Sampson would break through. Houston led 31-28 at halftime and extended the lead to 42-30 in the second half. But Florida chipped away at the Houston lead until it took one of its own in the final minute.
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Then, with 19.7 seconds remaining, Houston had the ball and a two-point deficit with a chance to tie the game or win it in regulation with a 3.
But disaster struck on that final possession. Houston ran into a wall of Florida defense, and didn’t manage to get off a final shot.
Why didn’t Houston get off a shot?
All-American LJ Cryer dribbled the ball over half court, then looked to set up sharpshooter Milos Uzan on the right wing. Uzan attempted to roll off a screen in an apparent effort to set up a go-ahead 3. Instead, he faced a double-team by Florida’s Alijah Martin and Thomas Haugh after Martin stayed with him.
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At that point, Uzan had nowhere else to go but to give the ball back to Cryer. Cryer met immediate resistance from Will Richard after the pass and dumped the ball off to Emanuel Sharp at the top of the key. Sharp then had the ball in his hands beyond the 3-point line with five seconds remaining and a choice.
Rather than attacking the basket, he chose to pull up from 3. But Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. came sprinting from the restricted area with his hand extended in Sharp’s face. Instead of releasing a contested shot that might have been blocked, Sharp dropped the ball to the court.
He then watched the ball bounce, knowing that if he touched it, he’d be called for traveling, and the game would be over. The end result was the same. A scramble of players dove after the loose ball, and the final horn sounded on Florida’s win.
Sampson could only watch helplessly from the sideline as the championship slipped through his and Houston’s grasp.
After the game, Sampson was asked about that final play. Here’s what he had to say:
“At the end, you’ve gotta get a shot,” Sampson said. “You’ve gotta do better than that.”
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Sampson then broke down what happened and what he would have preferred to have seen.
“He probably should have shot-faked that,” Sampson said of Sharp’s diverted 3-point attempt. “Both those guys, Richard and Martin, both really good defensively. Clayton made a great play on that. But that’s why you’ve got to shot-fake and get in the paint.
“Two’s fine.”
Two would have been fine. But zero was the result, and Florida is the national champion.
But Sampson told ESPN that he didn’t have critical words for his team in the locker room. In the end, Sampson said that he delivered a message of encouragement on the heels of a devastating loss in a championship game.
“I told them be disappointed that they lost but don’t be disappointed in their effort,” Sampson told ESPN. “These guys have played so hard for each other. And to get this far, get a minute, two minutes, a shot right there at the end of winning a national championship. They have so much to be proud of.
“And I am disappointed that we lost. But I’m more appreciative that I got a chance to coach this group.”
