Working against Duke, Cooper Flagg and Time, Houston designs a surrealist Final Four return

San Antonio – I Wan Roberts held out his hands. Set up, he begged.

Yes, it was impossible.

Yes, all this swirling and bizarre night was on the verge of alchemy.

Yes, it was about to be the night when Houston has achieved such a magnificent return, so shocking, that everyone will need – especially these souls in Durham, NC – a life to settle.

But settle, said Roberts. A 23 -year -old man, Roberts arrived at this time with all the appropriate prefaces. He spent the previous two hours trying to stay in front of the deep bag of the towers and crossroads of Cooper Flagg. He has spent the entire season to work constantly on his free launching set, up 150 per day of the band, every day, whatever happens. He has spent the past five years as part of a Houston program that did not suffer from madmen and desperately wanted to take him to a Monday evening in April. Now, the Roberts of 6 feet 8 inch and 235 pounds had a frank throw to give the Coogs an improbable lead – their first advance since the 15 -minute brand of the first half.

The clock said 19 seconds.

In what would end like a superb 70-67 victory in Houston, it was then that it all started to feel very real.

“Weren’t really nervous at all,” said Roberts later.

They are constructed different in Houston. Head coach Kelvin Sampson has been doing it for a long time. And that is why a team that dragged Mighty Duke 59-45 with eight minutes to play in the second half of the second national semi-final on Saturday evening is now heading for the national championship match. Monday evening, the Coogs will face Florida in a mega-match.

How could it be at the top of what happened here on Saturday? We will see.

“If you have a culture,” said Sampson, “quitting smoking is not part of the agreement. We are not going to stop. We are just going to play better.”

Everything happened quickly but will last now forever. Duke seemed ready to prevail even after seeing his 14 -point lead write to an advance of two possessions. It was finished when Flagg hit a 3, pushing the lead with 3:03 on the left. And it was finished when Joseph Tugler accidentally slapped the ball from the hands of Sion James on an inbuls pass with 1:14 on the left, winning a technical fault and sending Sampson grazing on the ground on the sidelines.

But then, in the last 33 seconds, everything happened. Do you want to know why Houston is Houston? Discover Tugler. Impected by the error of the bone head, he blocked the driving of Kon Knueppel with a minute to travel, by entering a crucial defensive stand. After an Emanuel Sharp 3 made an officially uncomfortable duke (67-64, 33 seconds of time), Tugler was one of the three Houston players to give to give a regrettable step back from James, triggering a frantic sequence. In a blur, Mylik Wilson launched a 3 while Tugler was unattended for the dunk of putback.

Then came the free throws of Roberts. Then came two others from LJ Cryer, the Houston Hero tonight.

Like that, a 9-0 race to close the night placed the alamodom in a hot and breathtaking dream machine. The return of 14 points in Houston is the fifth largest deficit surmounted by the history of the Final Four.

One of the craziest feedback that you will never see. pic.twitter.com/xvsxfi9631

– CBS Sports (@Cbssports) April 6, 2025

“As long as there is time on the clock, we go there and we give everything,” said Cryer, who scored 26 points, playing every second of every minute. “We were in positions like that before in Kansas, I did not remember how long we were, but it was late in the match, this game seemed almost finished. In one way or another, we ended up winning.”

It is difficult to make history in a city known to put men on the moon, but this Houston team could be the one that could finally lift a long -awaited banner. During his seventh appearance in the Final Four, Guy V. Lewis and Elvin Hayes and Otis Birdsong and Phi Slama Jama take place in the title. The 1983 team should have done so, if not for the Dereck Whittenburg uprising, the Dunk of Lorenzo Charles and the mad race of Jim Valvano. The Coogs returned to the national championship match the following year, despite the loss of Clyde Drexler against the NBA, but found itself on the wrong side of a duel between Hakeem Olajowon and Patrick Ewing.

Now, it was 2025 and, at a time when Houston basketball could easily have been left for waste, the coogs have rather gone from a marginal power conference program to a power plant on the edge of a first national championship. Eleven years ago, Sampson resumed a program with a dilapidated arena, a regrettable affiliation of the conference and a distant history. The Coogs had attended an NCAA tournament during the 21 years before the arrival of Sampson. He crossed the door and did school in the tournament by the 4th year, in Sweet 16 by year 5 and in the Final Four within 7.

Now he heads for the title game.

It was difficult at the end to remember that it was almost a rout from the start.

Houston started things by missing 14 of his first 17 shots, mainly on ugly possessions with a lot of dribbles and subsequent forced fire. Usually, these missed shots are strategic limits for coogs. They simply grasp the rebound and fill it with the throat of opponents. But Duke didn’t have that. Houston has not only dominated offensive glass, but he even fought on the defensive glass sometimes.

Sampson, coach of the 50th NCAA tournament match of his 32-year-old coach career, held his hands, the fingers spread largely, howling to find his team. Calling the dead time of 18-10, he told CBS that something should change. Cryer apparently heard it and made things happen. Some 3S fell and the coogs kept the door on the frame.

“I don’t think we could play worse,” said Sampson. “We were down six at halftime. So, instead of declaiming and delirious, I was probably calmer and positive because I thought that was what they needed, you know? “

In the cinematic version, Flagg, Duke’s transcendent first year student, would have made a winning game and was allegedly swept away. But Houston does not make stories books. On the potential shot, Flagg was draped by Roberts and left a short elbow jumper with eight seconds to do. “A blow with which I am ready to live in the scenario,” he said.

To Scheyer, there was regret targeted elsewhere. Duke has managed a basket in the last 10 minutes of the match and 31 seconds, missing eight of his last nine attempts. It allowed 42 points of second half and botched several end-of-game pieces.

“Obviously, as a coach, I am currently reflecting what I could have said or do else,” said Scheyer. “I’m sure there is a lot more than I could have done to help our guys at the end. This is the thing that kills me the most. ”

The final game of the evening was written as a James-to-Flagg baseball pass with a harsh resemblance of Grant Hill-to-Christian Laettner. It is only in this version, the inbound final pass was eliminated.

Flagg, with 27 points in his last university match, discovered his jersey and headed for the handshake line, and the Houston players spilled on the ground.

Sampson, meanwhile, threw a fist into the air and tried to treat what just happened.

Then comes the Florida, a colossus of a match. While it was the Coogs that bounced the Mighty Blue Devils, the Gators eliminated the head of N ° 1 Auburn to reach Monday evening. The Gators returned from a deficit of nine points in the second half to win 79-73, leading a performance of 34 points by Walter Clayton Jr.

At the end of the night, this return was just a footnote.

(Photo by Duke’s Cooper Flagg: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)