What a wild ending to the Duke vs Houston game. I can't remember the last time I saw a Final Four game, or for that matter any March Madness tournament game, where a full court press at the end of a game was so decisive. You see more of this in high school basketball but much rarer in college and, practically never, in the pros.
Duke led by 5-10 points for most the game. Houston had an obvious edge down low-- the Cougars J'Wan Roberts had 12 rebounds and Blue Devils Khaman Maluach zero; and the Cougars out-muscled the Blue Devils by over ten boards-- but every time Houston would pull close Duke responded. Cooper Flagg and Kon Kneuppel, for most the game, seemed to score at will; and when Duke were on a roll they'd whip passes around the horn for wide open shots. Houston's L.J. Cryer and Emanuel Sharp, in the end, scored as many as Duke's scoring duo but it didn't look that way for most the contest. Every scoring opportunity for the Cougars was hard fought. They looked like no match for Duke's offensive firepower.
But the Cougars hung around, wiping out a 14 point deficit in the final eight minutes, and in a crucial sequence with only a minute or two remaining, applied a full-court press so smothering Duke appeared incapable of even inbounding the ball. You could call it "winning ugly," it certainly wasn't pretty to any Duke fan, but it was devastatingly effective.
Apparently, the Cougars have some history of turning on their defense like this and when getting three stops in a row they call the third the "kill stop."
Indeed, Duke never recovered from the onslaught and looked discombobulated and defeated in the remaining moments of the game. At one point, Tyrese Proctor and Flagg were leaning on each other after a whistle, consolingly, before the game was over; as if they already knew it was over. And it was. Flagg got a final look, point blank, a short jumper in the key and came up short; a telltale sign of fatigue.
The Cougar press appeared to be man-to-man, no zone; just in your face pressure. Houston's coach Kelvin Sampson waved his troops forward and they stormed Duke's inbound. Duke finally bunched up all their players on the baseline trying to help with the inbound, oddly it appeared they were not running any kind of over the top action to get one of their guys free. And Houston was absolutely mauling them; like white on rice, as the saying goes.
It was like the late rounds of a fight, both fighters trying to hang on, win out on points, and the fighter slightly behind, watching the clock running down goes for one last frenzy of attack and a TKO. A "kill stop"! Duke had nothing left.
Games come down to players and what they do on the floor, to be sure. But this looked like Kelvin Sampson, Houston's coach, outfoxing Duke with a full court press in the last minute. He saw something in the way Duke was playing and turned the screws. His press was a knockout punch. In the aftermath, Duke looked as though they didn't know what had hit them.
Houston holds the record for going to Final Fours without winning a national championship. They get another shot on Monday against Florida. On paper, and from what I've seen in the tournament so far, I'd say Florida has the edge. But I thought more or less the same about Duke until the last four minutes of the game last night. So I don't know but look forward to finding out.
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