Houston, Duke and the comeback from nowhere

The Cougars pull a quiet miracle in knocking off Duke in the Final Four

J’wan Roberts

Never underestimate the heart of a champion….nah, Rudy Tomjanovich already said that.

Survive and advance….nope. That one belonged to Jim Valvano, as everyone in Houston already knew.

“No one ever loses at anything if you don’t quit.” Yeah. That’s the one.

That’s what Kelvin Sampson said when it was over Saturday night, as Houston fans all around him gasped at their 20-minute journey from despair to reluctant hope to jubilation, as Duke’s young millionaires walked quietly to an Alamodome locker room that had become a teenage wasteland.

The shock was not that Houston beat Duke in a Final Four semifinal, and forged a championship game date with Florida on Monday. Houston and Duke were both No. 1 seeds and left the arena Saturday with 35-4 records. But the assumption had been that the Cougars, with their longshoremen’s image and their commando style, had no chance to beat Duke and Cooper Flagg unless they played immaculate basketball. They didn’t, not by a long shot, but then when a game is buried under a compost heap and the winning team is the one who get the dirtiest, “immaculate” isn’t really what you’re after.

Houston shot 31 percent in the first half and had four two-point field goals. Two of its main shooters, Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp, were 1-for-5 apiece. Duke had scored 16 points in the paint and held Houston to six. The Blue Devils led at the half, 34-28, and none of those trends seemed reversible.

The second half began the same way. Flagg, who is as golden a child as college basketball has seen since Anthony Davis in 2012, hit a floater to give Duke a 58-45 lead with 10:31 left. With 8:17 lead the lead was 14. Time to talk about whether Flagg would really suffer a 2025-26 season with the Washington Wizards or Utah Jazz, or whether he and Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach and the rest of the young Devils would come back for more Wall Street money and a chance at true history. Meanwhile, Duke’s Mason Gillis got whistled for a flagrant foul, which led to a 3-point play, while you were cleaning up the nacho plates and the bean dip. Houston kept sawing wood. It was 59-53 with 5:55 left, 59-55 with 5:03 left. Duke had turned off the switch, in plain sight, but no one was leaving.

By now you know that the Cougars came all the way back and won, 70-67, and Duke had only one basket in the last 10 ½ minutes. But that one was a 3-pointer by Flagg that pushed the lead to nine points with three minutes remaining. Surely that was the ballgame. Instead, Houston continued its undercover work, scoring on foul shots with the clock stopped, snatching offensive rebounds and almost every loose ball, bothering Blue Devil shots. Meanwhile, Duke’s legs went dead. The movement that makes their offense so dynamic dried up, as everyone deferred to Flagg. The Cougars, older and with more scar tissue, actually got quicker. Defense is an energy drink for them. It’s where they’re comfortable.

There would be more reprieves for Duke. JoJo Tugler, who teamed with J’Wan Roberts to rule the backboards, unaccountably reached over the end line and slapped the ball while Duke’s Sion James was trying to inbound it. That’s a technical, and Sampson grabbed his head and slumped to the floor, as if handed a tax audit. Duke was ahead by five with 1:15 left, and Knueppel made the free throw and then rose for a mid-range shot that would have pushed the lead to eight. Tugler, refusing to let one gaffe turn him into Chris Webber, blocked that shot, and Sharp turned a typically arduous possession into a 3-pointer after faking out Flagg. The lead was 67-64 in the final minute.

At some point you remembered Duke’s starting lineup averages 19.4 years of age. It might be that Duke also realized it. There’s little doubt Houston did. Maluach, for example, is a 7-foot-2 freshman from South Sudan who might be drawing a paycheck for playing basketball through 2040 or so if basketball was the only issue. It isn’t, because Secretary of State Mario Rubio revoked the visas of all South Sudanese in the U.S. until the country accepts deported immigrants from America. It isn’t known whether Maluach knew about this at game time. Regardless, he had zero rebounds against Houston’s savvy adults.

After Sharp’s long shot, Sampson then called time out. The idea was to set another in-bounds pass, with Tugler nowhere near the scene. James threw an uncertain one, and Malik Wilson wound up with it for UH. He badly missed a 3-pointer but Tugler sneaked behind Flagg and stuffed the rebound in one motion. The lead was 67-66. America was awake.

The rest of it was a seminar, conducted by Sampson, on how to put a game on a leash. Proctor is a 68 percent foul-shooter, and he wound up with the ball and Houston indeed fouled him. He missed the front end. Roberts got the rebound and Flagg was called for a fairly chintzy over-the-back foul. That meant Roberts, a 63 percent foul shooter, would be on the line. He made both. Houston led by one.

From Jan. 25 to March 8, Duke played one game that was decided by 10 or fewer points. That was at Clemson, and Duke lost, 77-74. The other 11 games featured a 10-pointer and a 13-pointer, and the rest were blowouts. Afterward, coach Jon Scheyer blamed himself for not preparing Duke for such grinders, but the Devils did win close ones against Arizona and Auburn and Wake Forest, and when Flagg hurt his ankle in the ACC tournament they survived a close call against North Carolina. But there’s no question Houston experienced more warfare in the Big 12, including a game at Kansas Jan. 26 in which the Jayhawks had a six-point lead and the ball with :17 left in the first overtime. Dajuan Harris missed free throws, Sharp and Wilson made 3-pointers in the final seven seconds, and Houston won in the next overtime.

Here, Houston still needed a stop with 17 seconds left. Flagg got the ball on the left wing, again with all the other Blue Devils watching. Roberts guarded him. Sampson had tried enough futile double teams on Flagg, who had piled up 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists. He let Roberts handle Flagg alone, and Flagg tried a 12-footer instead of going hard to the basket and getting fouled. He missed, and the stealth miracle became a mission accomplished.

Last year Houston lost to Duke in the regional semifinals, by three. They clanged free throws throughout the night. Sampson gathered the team in the summer and decreed that each player would make 150 free throws on a daily basis, seven days a week. Roberts, at Tuesday’s practice, converted 87 percent.

“When he started this, he was at 66,” Sampson said. “That’s not the coaches. Give all the credit to him. Tonight, everybody was watching. But he prepared himself when nobody was watching.”

Roberts is a 6-year Cougar and has never been anything else, which makes him a Great Blue Heron in this day of flying suitcases. When Houston signed Jarace Walker, now with the Indiana Pacers, it endangered Roberts’ playing time. It also didn’t stop Roberts from making Walker his orientation project. A team needs Roberts but a program can’t do without him.

“We have to depend on unscripted points, a lot of nights,” Sampson said. “Tonight we had 19 second-chance points. And we had 18 offensive rebounds and held them to 39 percent shooting. So there you go.”

It’s nice to have explanations for the occult, in case somebody asks. It’s also permissible to sit back and take in a quiet miracle.