SAN ANTONIO — Everywhere you looked, there were tears. Shouts of four-letter expletives came from a backroom, as did the banging. Some players with towels over their heads apologized to reporters because they couldn’t stop weeping enough to answer questions.
National championship game heartbreak struck Houston again, inflicting the one program all too familiar with cruel Monday night outcomes. Seven Final Fours without a national title — the most appearances by a team still searching for a first championship — and more painful late-game images to accompany the ones that still play in montages from 1983.
The scene in Houston’s locker room following its 65-63 loss to Florida was a flood of emotion. Houston players, the staff — everyone was grappling in real time with the lowest basketball moment of their lives.
How does one process this: One game after a remarkable 14-point comeback to beat Duke, the script completely flipped, with the Cougars squandering a 12-point second-half lead in what matched the third-largest comeback in a title game. Houston closed the game committing turnovers on four consecutive possessions. The Cougars didn’t get off a shot in the game’s final 1:21. And in the closing seconds, with Houston trailing by two, the ball found the usually sure hands of three-point shooter Emanuel Sharp. In a moment of indecision, Sharp went up for a jumper but lost control of the ball. Florida recovered the fumble.
In an instant, the buzzer sounded, the confetti fell — but for the other team.
Some 90 minutes later, Houston’s 69-year-old coach, Kelvin Sampson — perhaps the game’s best yet to win a national title — still was standing outside the locker room, spewing emotion into reporters’ tape recorders, saying how he told Sharp afterward that he loved him.
“Two things you learn in coaching: You have to have a strong faith, something to lean on in something like this. You also have to have a strong family,” Sampson said. “… Protecting these kids, I care more about protecting them right now, making sure they know what an awesome, awesome year they had.
“The tears were real. Cry, but don’t be disappointed in the effort. The fact that they are crying shows you how much they care. I don’t want a team that doesn’t cry — that means I recruited the wrong dudes. The freshmen who didn’t even get to play were in there wailing. The seniors were over there trying to help them; that tells you a little bit about this group.”
Sampson has been chasing a national title for four decades. In his third Final Four appearance — the second with Houston — this was poised to be the year. During the regular season, Houston lost four games, three in overtime. A coaching journey that began at Montana Tech in the early 1980s could have been capped Monday night with a title.
“We wanted to win it for him,” sophomore forward Joseph Tugler said. “We all wanted it for him.”
“I wanted it so bad for him,” sixth-year big man Ja’Wan Roberts said. “So, so, so bad. And it hurts. I can’t do it next year. I can’t put myself in position to do it next year. This will be my last time wearing my jersey, and I feel terrible.”
Sampson kept replaying the last two possessions in his mind.
“Incomprehensible in that situation we couldn’t get a shot — couldn’t get a shot,” he said. “(Florida senior guards Walter) Clayton and (Alijah) Martin combined to go 5-for-20. If you would have told me we would hold those two guys 5-for-20 …”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
Sampson’s Houston teams have had their share of crushing NCAA Tournament losses, including a long buzzer-beater by Michigan’s Jordan Poole in the second round seven years ago. But nothing like this. The long, slow walk by players and coaches off the court, down a long hallway and into the locker room was unlike any other.
Sampson’s son and assistant, Kellen, stood in a backroom of the locker room, replaying in his mind all of the sequences, the shots, the actions, the whistles — had one or two gone a different way, there’d be tears for an entirely different reason.
“A journey,” Kellen Sampson said. “You’re trying to process everything that just happened. All year, this team had been so good at winning ugly, at winning tough, tight, gritty games. Someone always stepped up and made the play and got us to the finish line.”
He later added, “You win 35 games and you feel like (expletive).”
The coaches had the roster they wanted. They avoided key injuries. They complemented their holy trinity of defense, rebounding and ball protection with the nation’s best 3-point shooting percentage. They suffocated a formidable Tennessee team in the Elite Eight, roared back to knock off Duke and its trio of potential NBA lottery picks, and the staff liked the matchup against Florida.
What Kellen Sampson kept thinking about was that with a 12-point lead, the Cougars had three or four possessions when they failed to convert, letting Florida remain within striking distance. And that on the game’s final possession, it wasn’t necessarily designed for a three-point shot.
Florida had to respect Sharp’s three-point shooting, and when Gator defenders closed out, there still was time to penetrate with 5 seconds remaining. Clayton flew toward Sharp as he rose in the air. Sharp made the decision to drive to the basket, Kellen Sampson said, but decided too late.
A moment later, the opportunity was lost. Sharp sank to his knees, head in hands, consoled by teammate Ja’Vier Francis and briefly by Clayton, the player Sharp guarded so well for so long Monday night.
“This is a gut-punch,” Kellen Sampson said. “So much has to go right to get here, and it did. Then we’re up 12. … Emanuel’s got it; if he lets that go and it finds the net, everyone is talking that (Kelvin Sampson) is an offensive savant.”
Next season, Houston will welcome to campus a sterling recruiting class, which includes three top-20 players. The elder Sampson will be 70 when the 2025-26 season begins.
“Nights like tonight will rejuvenate him — and he’ll be full of piss and vinegar,” Kellen said. “He’ll do a pretty good job beating himself up, rehashing.”
How long will he reshash?
“A couple years,” Kellen said. “This one ain’t leaving you anytime soon.”
Kelvin Sampson eventually will watch the tape, his son said, but probably not until June or July. Right now, the emotion is raw, the tears are real.
Houston entered the national title game with a 35-4 record. In the middle of the locker room, 90 minutes after the game, a giant whiteboard stood with two numbers written in the middle — two numbers that will stay with this group:
35-5.
“This particular Monday night, they didn’t get crowned,” Kellen Sampson said. “But there will be a Monday night when we do get crowned, and it will be because these guys broke some barriers.”
