This season may very well be totally different.
After years of falling brief on the large stage, Houston has its greatest probability of successful the lads’s NCAA Match.
Have doubts? Simply have a look at how the Cougars defeated Arizona (22-12, 14-6 in Huge 12), 72-64, to win its first Huge 12 Match championship in its second season as a convention member.
Related Press No. 2 Houston (30-4, 19-1 in Huge 12) is not simply a wonderful defensive workforce anymore. Whereas it is nonetheless the nation’s greatest on that facet of the courtroom, Houston’s huge strides on offense have given it its greatest probability of successful the primary nationwide title in program historical past.
The Cougars have been 9-of-23 (39.1 %) on three-point subject purpose makes an attempt, maintaining with the wonderful tempo they set by their first 33 video games. Getting into Saturday, Houston was No. 4 within the nation in three-point subject purpose proportion (39.8 %), up from a No. 132 end in 2023 (34.8 %).
Houston is extensively anticipated to be a No. 1 seed for the third consecutive season when the lads’s NCAA Match bracket is revealed on Sunday. It misplaced within the Candy 16 through the previous two tournaments.
In 2021, the Cougars reached the Last 4, dropping within the nationwide semifinal to eventual nationwide champion Baylor.
Houston has blossomed into the nation’s greatest defensive workforce below head coach Kelvin Sampson, who was employed in 2014. The Cougars have ranked No. 1 in scoring protection the previous two seasons, together with permitting 58.5 factors per recreation in 2024-25.
They have been staunch defensively in opposition to Arizona within the Huge 12 title recreation, holding the Wildcats 18.3 factors beneath their season common (82.3 factors per recreation) coming into Saturday. Arizona did not rating a subject purpose within the recreation’s last 5 minutes and 32 seconds.
The protection hasn’t been the issue throughout Houston’s current NCAA Tourney losses. However the offense has.
In Houston’s final 4 March Insanity losses, it has shot 23.1 % from past the arc (18-of-78) and averaged 57.3 factors per recreation. In an Elite Eight loss to Villanova in 2022, Houston shot 1-of-20 from distance and scored 44 factors.
In final 12 months’s Candy 16 loss to Duke, the Cougars solely tried eight threes (making two) in a 54-51 loss.
Houston’s improved three-point taking pictures offers it a practical probability to chop down the nets in San Antonio, the host website for this 12 months’s Last 4 and nationwide championship recreation.
The Cougars have three excellent long-range shooters: fifth-year senior guard LJ Cryer, junior guard Emanuel Sharp, and junior switch guard Milos Uzan.
Cryer was a freshman on Baylor’s 2021 nationwide championship workforce and transferred to Houston in 2023. Getting into Saturday, he led the Huge 12 in three-point proportion (42.5 %) amongst qualifying gamers, averaging three makes on 7.1 makes an attempt per recreation.
Sharp is 74-of-173 (42.7 %) from distance, whereas Uzan is 52-of-122 (42.6 %), and the 2 mixed for seven of Houston’s 9 makes in opposition to Arizona.
Houston has been the winningest males’s faculty basketball program since 2018, with 4 consecutive 30-win seasons since 2021-22. It has been ranked No. 1 within the AP ballot 10 occasions since 2022 and earned two (quickly to be three) No. 1 seeds within the NCAA Match.
It is received back-to-back Huge 12 common season championships and a convention match championship.
As adorned as Houston has been below Sampson, it is lacking one factor: a nationwide title. Perhaps not for lengthy.
