INDIANAPOLIS — Nearly 90 minutes after Houston claimed its first Final Four berth since 2021 with a 69-50 Midwest Region championship win over Tennessee, Kelvin Sampson stood near the entrance to his locker room scrolling and scrolling and scrolling through “407” congratulatory text messages to find one that really hit home.
The one from Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich.
“I’m the happiest person in San Antonio today, but not as happy as you, Karen and the family — and your whole program built with great care and true love,” Sampson read aloud. “Bravo, my good friend from way back on our walks.”
Sampson then took a second to explain that was a reference to their summer of 2002 together in San Francisco — when their friendship blossomed while working on George Karl’s Team USA staff for the FIBA World Championship.
“Enjoy your win tonight with a good red.”
And Sampson smiled.
But lest you started to think the Houston Cougars are some sort of wine-and-cheese program, you could have made a right and left turn to go deeper corner into their Lucas Oil Stadium locker room and find their penned goals on the wall. On the list of GAME KEYS, here was the fourth and final:
2 DOGS, 1 BONE
SAN ANTONIO!!!
The college basketball world believed top-seeded Houston (34-4) and second-seeded Tennessee (30-8) walked into Lucas Oil Stadium as similar breeds, but it didn’t take long for the Cougars to prove to be top dawgs deserving of Saturday’s Final Four semifinal against No. 1 seed Duke in San Antonio.
Nine minutes into Sunday’s supposed showdown, Houston owned a 17-4 lead because its voracious man-to-man defense forced Tennessee to miss 11 of its first 12 shots — including more than one air ball. The Cougars led by 22 points just before halftime and never let the Vols get back within single digits.
“I had seen Tennessee play quite a bit,” Sampson said. “I knew Zakai Zeigler and Chaz Lanier and the (Jordan) Gainey kid. We’ve seen them a lot, but we felt like it was a good matchup for us.”
Why was that? Allow sixth-year Houston’s 6-foot-8 post J’Wan Roberts — whose contributions Sunday were bigger than his stat line of nine points, two rebounds, two steals and one block — to explain.
“When we watched them on film, they were getting a lot of wide-open shots,” Roberts said. “When they play against other teams, you know, it looks pretty easy. But when you’re going up against the top defensive team in the nation, it ain’t going to look easy. You’re going to have to work hard to get certain shots. I felt we put a lot of pressure on them early, just making them uncomfortable.”
The Cougars made it tough for the Vols to catch the ball on the perimeter. Then, if anybody happened to get a half-step ahead on the perimeter, there was always Roberts or 6-foot-8 leaper Joseph Tugler or Ja’Vier Francis, a burly 6-foot-8 front-court reserve, there to deter any thoughts of safe passage to the rim.
Yes, Tennessee missed its first 14 3-point attempts and finished 5 of 29 on 3-pointers. But the Vols also went just 10 of 23 inside the arc. The problems began on the game’s first possession when Lanier took a pass on a curl and tossed up a smooth 17-footer…that finished a couple feet shy of the rim.
After falling behind by as much as 34-12 in the final minute of the first half, the Vols chipped away in the second half. Jordan Gainey, one of six seniors in their eight-man rotation, scored 10 points in less than three minutes to give the absurdly pro-Tennessee crowd something to roar about.
The decibel level really cranked up with 5:05 to go when senior Jahmai Mashack forced a turnover on the press to give the Vols the ball down 53-42. Gainey drove past his man in search of a layup, but Tugler’s presence at the rim helped his lefty layup go awry.
Emanuel Sharp and Mykil Wilson answered with back-to-back 3-pointers and it was all over except for the confetti, the net-cutting and the congratulatory texting.
“They deserve it,” said Lanier, Tennessee’s leading scorer who finished 4 of 18 overall and 2 of 12 on threes. “They were the tougher team tonight. They came out and handled business. They were getting into the ball, not making anything look easy. Really, just pressuring. We knew it was going to be tough coming in, but they were relentless for the whole 40 minutes.”
Before the game, the debate was whether Houston or Tennessee would be tougher. Mashack even declared his Vols had the better and tougher group of guards. Mashack finished with four points, five rebounds, two steals and missed all four of his free throw attempts. His backcourt mate for life, third-team all-American Zakai Zeigler went 1-for-9 from the field with game-highs for assists (five) and turnovers (four).
Meanwhile, all three of Houston’s guards — Sharp, LJ Cryer and Milos Uzan — made the five-man all-Midwest Region team.
“We heard people saying that they were the tougher team going into it,” said Cryer, who finished with 17 points. “They had some people saying they were going to beat us because of their toughness. We knew we were going to have to raise our intensity and fight — and that’s what we did.”
Now, after playing with a distinct home-court disadvantage against Purdue and Tennessee in the last two games, Houston finally earns a break by getting to play in San Antonio in front of Popovich and others who hope to see the Cougars claim their first national championship. For those who track such things, it’s 199.7 miles from the Fertitta Center in Houston to the Alamodome.
“That was probably 16,000 Tennessee fans,” Sampson said. “That’s awesome for Tennessee. Jump on the interstate and get here. That’s what we’ll do next week. We’ll jump on the interstate (I-10) and head down (to) San Antonio.”
Though you get the sense the Cougars, who are 12-0 this year in a road environment, wouldn’t complain if their Final Four semifinal got shifted to Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Said Roberts: “We’re some road warriors.”
