Houston's Kelvin Sampson was close to his 1st national title. It slipped away painfully vs. Florida

SAN ANTONIO — All Kelvin Sampson could do was stand there, hands on hips with a blank look on his face, as the ball bounced loose and Houston's latest chance at a national title bounced away, too.

The coach who has commanded all details over a 36-year career of wins, losses and a few Final Fours couldn't do anything about this one. The last-second blunder ended in a 65-63 loss to Florida on Monday night.

It took years for the 69-year-old coaching lifer to turn Houston into one of college basketball's top programs again – one built on defense, toughness, rebounding and doing things a certain, hard-nosed way. Sampson rehabilitated his image too, the pariah who nobody understood becoming an almost-lovable beacon for how to connect with players and do things the ''right'' way.

But there was no escape from the anguish this time, from squandering a 12-point second-half lead to that final-play turnover that sent Sampson into the offseason stuck on win No. 799 in a winding-road career.

''There's always going to be naysayers and Negative Nellies and all that stuff, but that's where your faith and your family is way more important than any of that stuff,'' Sampson said outside Houston's locker room in the Alamodome.

"And protecting these kids, I care more protecting them right now to make sure they know what a great year they had. What an awesome, awesome, awesome year they had.''

The game ended with Houston (35-5) unable to even get up a shot on its last two possessions, a fact Sampson called ''incomprehensible.'' On the first, Emanuel Sharp drove the right side but had the ball stripped and lost it out of bounds with 26.6 seconds left and Houston down one.

Moments later, Houston had its second chance to go ahead. The ball again went to Sharp, who tried to fire a 3-pointer on the catch only to see a hard closeout by Florida star Walter Clayton Jr. coming his way.

Stuck in the air, he tried to dribble the ball to avoid a turnover and was forced to let it bounce, the ball hitting the court with about 4.5 seconds left and then continuing to bounce for another 2-plus precious seconds. Finally Florida's Alex Condon dove for the ball, sending Houston's Ja'Vier Francis to the floor and killing the final moments of the Cougars' title dream.

Moments later, as the confetti started to fall for the Gators, Sampson walked with his head down to the edge of the court as though trying to make sense of what had just happened. He descended the steps, then started making his way up the lane through the heaviest concentration of red-clad Houston fans in a painful march to the locker room.

''I wanted it so bad for him,'' said Houston big man J'Wan Roberts, who played five seasons for Sampson after a redshirt year. ''So, so, so bad. And it hurts.

''Coach Sampson, the role that he played in my life, I can't even put into words.''

It was nearly the highlight of a coaching career that includes stops at Washington State, Oklahoma — where he guided the Sooners to the 2002 Final Four — and Indiana. Ousted from IU due to an NCAA probe into Sampson making too many recruiting phone calls, he received a five-year show cause penalty in 2008 that kept him out of the college ranks until his return at Houston in 2014.

Sampson found refuge there after spending his exile in the NBA, while he offered the school the dream of reconnecting with its history tied to the famed Phi Slama Jama era in the 1980s — which before this year had marked the program's only two trips to the NCAA title game — behind a coach with a proven record for winning.

By his third season, Sampson had the Cougars back in March Madness. They won 33 games in his fourth, then two years later had the Cougars back in the Final Four in 2021 — the program's first since Hakeem Olajuwon and coach Guy Lewis led them to the 1984 title game before falling to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown.

The Indianapolis bubble run of four years ago eliminated any lingering doubt about Houston's full arrival as a national power. It's all rooted in Sampson's vision, built in his image by demanding an unyielding fight and work ethic going back to his upbringing in eastern North Carolina.

His team had put that on display all season, most recently with an improbable comeback in the final minute to stun Duke in Saturday's national semifinals. Then came Monday night's finale, leading just about the entire way and keeping Clayton under control after the Gators star had torn through March Madness.

The Cougars just couldn't finish it out on a night when they shot just 34.8%, including 6 of 25 from 3-point range, putting too much weight on the defense to carry them home.

''I'm just proud of the way we fought all season,'' leading scorer L.J. Cryer said.

And in the end, Sampson couldn't find the answer. Instead, he spent 20 extra minutes after his postgame news conference talking it all out with reporters, an unusual sight for the losing coach on the final Monday night of the season.

''Disappointing,'' he said. ''But we didn't lose in the first round. We didn't lose in the CBI. We lost in the national championship game, to the best team the SEC has. We fought them tooth and nail down to the end, and I'm proud of my team.''

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This story has been corrected to show Houston had twice made the NCAA title game, not once.

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