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Houston may not have a star, but this hard-nosed team has turned off the water for every offense it has seen thus far

Over the course of this week leading up to the Final Four, I’ll take you inside each of the Final Four teams’ paths to San Antonio and what it will take for each of them to cut down the nets on Monday night. For my article on Duke, check http://hoopscoopmedia.com, but now onto the Houston Cougars, whose defensive clinic ran through the Midwest Region over the last two weeks.

In round one, Houston went up against first-time NCAA Tournament participants, SIUE, sending the other Cougars packing early with a 78-40 pummeling. Houston’s elite defense held SIUE to 30.6% from the field, while star guard Ray’Sean Taylor, the 2025 Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and SIUE’s all-time leading scorer, scored just ten points on a 3-of-13 mark from the field. Ten Cougars scored in the contest with Milos Uzan’s 16 points leading the way in Houston’s first game back in Wichita since leaving the AAC two seasons ago.

The round of 32 for Houston brought the best matchup of the 2025 NCAA Tournament’s first weekend, as the Cougars took on a terribly under-seeded Gonzaga team. The nation’s second-highest scoring offense at 86.4 points per game was held to just 76 as the Cougars escaped Wichita 81-76 to head to the Sweet 16. Houston jumped out to an early lead and Gonzaga crawled back throughout the game, but the last offensive possession for the Zags went awry and Khalif Battle’s desperation three-pointer that could’ve tied the game with three seconds left was blocked by Ja’Vier Francis. LJ Cryer had his shot going throughout the game, finishing with 30 points on six three-pointers to lead Houston.

In Indianapolis for the Midwest regional games, Houston faced a stern test from Purdue, who had virtually a home crowd less than 100 miles from West Lafayette. The Boilermakers led 31-29 at the half in this one, but Houston started the second half on an 11-1 run fueled by Emanuel Sharp’s scoring ability to take control. After Camden Heide tied the game at 60-60 with 35 seconds left, Houston got two chances on its final possession. The second of which came on a baseline out-of-bounds play, executed perfectly by Kelvin Sampson’s squad which gave Milos Uzan the game-winning basket with less than a second to play. The final score went down as 62-60, an all-out grinder between two of the elite programs in college basketball currently. Uzan and Sharp led the way in the scoring column, scoring 22 and 17 points respectively in the win to advance to the Elite Eight.

In the Elite Eight, Houston matched up with a Tennessee squad that had a defense just as elite as the Cougars. Houston’s defense instilled a fear into the Volunteers’ offense early though and held Tennessee to just 15 points in the first half. The 15-point mark was the lowest in any first half by a team seeded one or two in NCAA Tournament history. With the tone set from the beginning, Houston cruised to a 69-50 win after possessing a 29-8 lead in the first half. Cryer scored 17 as Sharp scored 16, but the focus was defensively as Houston held Tennessee’s stars Zakai Zeigler and Chaz Lanier to 1-of-9 and 4-of-18 from the field respectively, with the team shooting just 28.8%.

Houston’s top ranked defense, which has held every team its faced in the NCAA Tournament thus far to at least ten points below its season average will face off against the nation’s #1 offense in Duke. Duke ran through the East Region with an average margin of victory of 23.5 and the second game of Saturday night’s doubleheader in San Antonio. The trip to the Final Four marks the third time Kelvin Sampson has reached this stage, and the second with Houston after taking the Cougars there in 2021, losing to the eventual national champions, Baylor.

If there was going to be a team in San Antonio that takes down Duke, I think it’d be the one playing in its home state. Joseph Tugler will have his hands full defending Cooper Flagg, but the nation’s top defender should provide a different level of physicality to Flagg, one that the freshman superstar hasn’t seen in a long time. To respect the high level of competition that should occur in San Antonio I won’t call Duke-Houston the de facto national championship game, but I think the winner will be favored on Monday night.

Other Things to Note:

• The Final Four tips off on Saturday, April 5 at 6:09 ET on CBS as Florida takes on Auburn followed by the matchup between Houston and Duke