Houston uncorked mayhem in the penultimate game of this year’s NCAA Tournament with an amazing comeback Saturday to defeat Duke 70-67 in the Final Four. The Cougars erased a 14-point second-half deficit and closed on a 25-8 run to stun the Blue Devils, tying for the second-largest Final Four comeback in the last decade.
The stirring run included a 9-0 stretch over the game’s final 33 seconds as Houston punched its ticket to its third-ever title game and first since 1984 in an unbelievable finish.
“No one ever loses in anything, as long as you don’t quit,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said on CBS. “We’ve been here before. We felt like if we could get it close enough to put some game pressure on them, that something good could happen.”
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Sampson, whose Cougars trailed by 14 points with 8:03 remaining, added this kicker: “It’s not like we were down 20.”
He’s right, technically — but they were pretty close!
Evan Miyakawa, who runs college basketball analytics website EvanMiya.com, said that with 8:17 remaining and Houston trailing by 14 in the second half, Duke had a 98.5% win probability in his model.
That game-high deficit for Houston, which was as a season-high deficit, preceded a 10-0 Cougars run that got them right back in the mix for the closing stretch. And with Houston rallying, Duke went on the ropes and never recovered.
In the final 10:30 of the second half, Duke made one field goal while Houston reeled off a 25-9 run. In that span, Houston took 19 shot attempts to Duke’s nine, spurred by six offensive boards for the Cougars and five Duke turnovers.
“Basketball is a game of runs,” said Houston forward J’Wan Roberts, who had six points, four boards and four assists in the second half. “Looking at the time and the clock, we had a feeling we could still win the game.”
It was as much a blown lead for Duke as it was a miraculous comeback from Houston — and it’s not the first time Duke has dissipated on the big stage. In the 2004 national semifinals, Duke lost 79-78 to UConn in San Antonio after leading by eight with 3 minutes remaining.
“It’s still hard to process,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said on CBS. “I thought our guys did an incredible job. We had some good looks, didn’t finish. And you have to give Houston a ton of credit. Even with that, we had the lead with a minute to go. … In a moment like this, we were this close. We thought we were the best team; the best team tonight was Houston.”
Fittingly, Houston’s comeback pits it against another team Monday in the national championship game in Florida, which has made something of a habit of relying on comebacks to advance this postseason.
Florida dug out of a nine-point second-half deficit vs. Auburn on Saturday in the Final Four and also had to erase a 10-point second-half deficit in the Elite Eight vs. Texas Tech.