SAN ANTONIO — Down by 14 points with 8:17 remaining in the second half of the Final Four, Houston appeared to be winding down the final minutes of their last game of this college basketball season. The consensus top player in college basketball, Cooper Flagg, and a Blue Devils team that might’ve been the best in the country were not only in total control in that moment, they had been for virtually the entire night. But Duke didn’t score a single point over the next four and a half minutes, helping set the stage for a furious Houston comeback for the ages.
The Cougars ultimately ended their stunning 70-67 victory on a 15-3 run, part of a larger 25-8 spurt after going down by those 14 points. The loaded Blue Devils managed just one field goal in the last 10-plus minutes, a Flagg triple that seemed to be the dagger with around three minutes to play. While the freshman phenom scored 27 points, he got little help as most of his teammates failed to find their way into the offensive flow. So when they needed buckets, they struggled.
“Cooper was not going to beat us by himself,” Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson said.
It’s not an uncommon strategy against teams that feature a star player to hone in on keeping their role players at bay.
“Flagg got 27,” Sampson said of the 18-year-old star who’d been named the Associated Player of the Year the day before. “[Konn] Knueppel made some shots. But, we were really focused on those other guys.”
No other Blue Devil outside of their top two scorers this season, Flagg and Knueppel, scored in double figures.
“We did a great job on all the other guys,” Sampson continued, reiterating that Duke’s second-best player had his moments in scoring 16. “Knueppel, he made some tough 3s.”
ON TO THE SHIP
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(@UHCougarMBK) April 6, 2025
Houston basketball prioritizes pressure vs. Duke
With just 2:17 remaining in the contest and with Flagg having just followed a 3-pointer with an emphatic block on a Joseph Tugler shot, Houston basketball was still down by nine points. On the wrong side of the score, they had also ceded the momentum.
“I felt like if we could just hang in there, even when we were down 14,” Sampson revealed of his team’s biggest deficit six minutes earlier. “That’s what I was talking about in the huddle.”
“I thought if we could get it down to single digits, get it down to about five,” he added about his team’s continued comeback.
Thanks to relentless defense and effort, the Cougars kept chipping away. Two Emmanuel Sharp free throws cut the deficit to five with 1:14 to play.
“Once you hit the 3, now there’s game pressure,” Sampson said, alluding to a Sharp 3-pointer that made it a three-point affair with 33 seconds on the clock.
“It’s a lot easier to finish the game when you’re up 20. It’s a lot harder when you’ve got to finish it up three, or up four. Even up six and that’s why I said, don’t foul. It’s six points, that’s only two possessions.”
Eventually the Cougars, in part because of defensive pressure that forced turnovers, took the lead. And after Flagg missed a turnaround jumper in the lane in the final seconds that would’ve given Duke the lead, Houston continued to knock down free throws.
A last-ditch Duke effort as time expired never truly had a chance. The Cougars’ emphasis on Blue Devils not named Flag proved key on that final play. Fitting given their triumphant game plan.
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