SAN ANTONIO – For the last year, every day his feet have touched a basketball floor, J’Wan Roberts has finished that day’s work with 150 made free throws.
Not free throws, total. The makes, plus however many he misses on his way to 150.
Roberts isn’t alone. It’s a dedicated practice for Houston’s players, so engrained in team behavior coach Kelvin Sampson tasks a graduate assistant with delivering final shooting percentages to him afterward.
There’s history behind it — specifically last year’s Sweet 16 loss to Duke, when Houston shot 9-of-17 from the free-throw line. Roberts, then a fifth-year senior, accounted for five of those eight misses, internalizing his mistakes and the ways they could have changed a one-possession loss.
“Maybe we weren’t ready to make them then,” Sampson mused in the small hours of Sunday morning.
That was a year and a week ago. Even allowing for 100 days off between then and now — probably a generous estimate — that’s more than 39,000 made free throws since that night in Dallas.
You make them to wash away the taste of failure. You make them, as Sampson said, because “you prepare for moments like this, when everybody’s watching, in those moments when nobody is.”
You make them for moments like this.
How Houston’s comeback against Duke started
Houston’s 14-point comeback against Duke, in a 70-67 win Saturday night made historic by the deficit and unbelievable to the naked eye, is the fifth-largest in the history of the Final Four.
Of course, the ugly truth of incredible comebacks is they probably started badly, and No. 1 seed Houston was certainly guilty here. The Cougars fell behind midway through the first half, shooting poorly and, almost unbelievably, getting outworked on the glass. Duke’s lead stretched to double digits before Houston shot its way back just before halftime.
Here, Sampson reminded his team about being down five at the half against Purdue in this year’s Sweet 16. About the comeback at Arizona, or even better, the one at Kansas, when the Jayhawks led by six in Lawrence with 70 seconds left and Houston’s win probability cratered to 0.4% on KenPom and the Cougars still won in double overtime.
Mostly, Sampson emphasized the need to clean up the defensive mistakes, and win the possession battle by outworking Duke for second-chance rebounds.
“We played like crap, we’re down six,” Sampson said, returning to the present. “What’s the problem? There’s 20 more minutes.”
And still, it got worse before it got better.
At no point Saturday did Houston shoot the ball particularly well. With the exception of L.J. Cryer — whose 26 points kept his team from drowning — only one other Cougars player attempted more than one field goal and made 50% of them.
When Duke’s lead crested at 14, Houston looked like a team fighting for its life possession after possession.
Which meant Houston wasn’t dead.
“It ain’t over,” Cryer said postgame, “because they’ve still got time on the clock.”
How Houston’s comeback happened
While fellow No. 1 seed Duke tried to figure out Cryer, Houston had its hands full with Cooper Flagg.
The national player of the year and presumptive No. 1 overall pick in the coming summer’s NBA draft, Flagg finished with a line befitting his prodigious talent Saturday: 27 points, seven rebounds, four assists, three blocks, two steals.
Per ESPN, he became the first player to either lead or co-lead his team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks, all, in a Final Four game, since steals and blocks because official statistics in 1986.
And Sampson could live with that.
Houston never expected to stop Flagg. There’s a reason no one really has, and an old coach knows that best.
“They had three guys that could get 30,” Sampson said. “We weren’t going to dedicate two or three to Cooper, at the risk of somebody else getting 30. Those other guys had to earn those.”
The Cougars couldn’t double- or triple-team Flagg. They could, though, frustrate him.
Take away his secondary options. Shrink the floor. Fill passing lanes and cut off second chances.
In the game’s dying minutes, Sampson shifted Roberts, now in his sixth and final year of college basketball, onto the most famous player in America. Flagg had the shooting and the passing and the exciting NBA future, but Roberts had years of determination, toughness and resolve earned in offseason runs in the south Texas heat, and Sampson’s demanding practices, and remarkable success and, yes, heartbreaking defeat.
The greatest weapon Roberts could bring to bear against Flagg on Saturday was experience. The knowledge that some shots just go in. That good players make plays, and great players make great ones. Just because you don’t stop him on one possession doesn’t mean you won’t stop him on another.
Make him uncomfortable, and wear him down. You never know when he might crack.
“We watch a lot of film where if guys are guarding him, they back up and let him make passes and be comfortable,” Roberts said. “The biggest thing was to crowd him, make him as uncomfortable as possible.”
It happened the way these things tend to — slowly, and then all at once.
Cryer kept making tough shots. Emanuel Sharp joined the party, with 12 second-half points.
In the same frame, Houston started punishing Duke on the boards. Eventually 18 offensive rebounds turned into 19 second-chance points. Six-point runs became nine-point runs. Three-minute scoring droughts became four.
With 8:17 left in the second half, Duke led 59-45. The Blue Devils would score eight points from there on in. They made just one field goal in the last 10½ minutes.
“Even when they were up 14, I thought we could play better,” Sampson said. “I was imploring our kids, ‘Just stay with it. Stay with it.’”
How Houston’s comeback ended
That was the slowly. The all at once came after Joseph Tugler gave away a one-shot technical foul for swiping a ball while it was still in the inbounder’s hands.
Normally, Sampson would remove a player who’d committed a technical. But he knows Tugler like he knows so many of his players — Houston has fewer than the average number of transfers — and he knew Tugler’s mistake was “born out of effort.”
Kon Knueppel made the technical free throw to push the lead to six. Then Tugler repaid his coach’s faith by blocking Knueppel on Duke’s ensuing possession, that block leading to a runout and Sharp’s 3-pointer in transition.
Sampson loves these moments. He calls them “unscripted plays,” random outcomes that aren’t about running a predetermined set but letting the flow of the game and the instincts he’s built in his players dictate decisions.
“We score more unscripted points than we do off of set plays,” he said afterward. “Most people look at that and say well, we’re not pretty. This ain’t a beauty contest. If it was a beauty contest, we shouldn’t have showed up. But most people get wowed by the beauty, and sometimes, that old mare over there, she knows how to navigate a basketball court for 40 minutes.”
As the clock approached the 40th minute Saturday, Cougar fans made the Alamodome a bear pit. Duke turned the ball over on the inbounds pass immediately following Sharp’s 3, and Tugler paid his coach back again when he slammed home a tip dunk off Mylik Wilson’s miss.
Waves of Devil blue watched in nervous silence, as Tyrese Proctor missed the front end of a 1-and-1. Roberts grabbed the rebound. Flagg was whistled for a foul. Harsh? Perhaps. But nobody’s giving it back.
On his way to the free-throw line, Roberts was stopped by starting point guard Milos Uzan.
“I told him, ‘Bro, you do this every day,’” Uzan said, “‘so go knock ‘em down.’”
Roberts hit one, then the other. Then he finished the jump tightly contesting Flagg’s turnaround 12-footer inside the lane, which fell short. Wilson snatched the rebound, the ball found Cryer and Duke fouled him.
Then something remarkable happened: The arena went quiet.
Houston fans didn’t want to put their player off. And Duke fans were so astonished by the totality of the collapse they watched in a stunned silence.
He made both. The Blue Devils couldn’t get the ball in cleanly. And it was done.
In the aftermath outside a joyous locker room, NCAA officials hauled away a large poster bracket with the HOUSTON placard slapped haphazardly onto it at a strange angle.
There were more important things Saturday night. No one was worried about looking pretty.
This program has known some heartbreak: Seven Final Fours, two national championship game appearances, no titles. One of the most famous upsets in NCAA Tournament history — North Carolina State’s famous last-second slam-dunk win over Guy Lewis’ Phi Slama Jama team in 1983 — still hangs on Houston’s shoulders.
Not this night.
Florida waits on Monday. The Gators are playing as well as anyone. They dispatched No. 1 overall seed Auburn with a rousing second half Saturday, and Walter Clayton Jr. is scoring the ball as dangerously as anyone in the country.
That won’t bother Houston. Nothing does. And on the evidence of Saturday night, nothing will.
“I’m telling you: It’s a special team. We’ve all got so much belief in each other,” Uzan said. “We’re gonna keep fighting ‘til the end.”
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on X: @ZachOsterman.