Houston coach Kelvin Sampson walks off the Alamodome court after his team blew a 12-point lead in the second half and lost the national title game to Florida Monday night in San Antonio. AP Photo Eric Gay.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Imagine that was Guy V. Lewis.
I’m talking about Guy Lewis, the long-time Houston coach pummeled for falling short, not Kelvin Sampson, standing on the sideline at the Alamodome in San Antonio on Monday night.
The coach with his arms crossed with a first-team all-Dumbfounded look as his Cougars’ team failed to score in the final 2 minutes and 5 seconds, turning the ball over four straight times while handing the 2025 National Championship to Florida in a gutting 65-63 defeat.
Imagine Guy V. Lewis coached that Houston team.
Bum.
Never could coach.
No titles for you ever, buddy.
Pick another coach whose teams regularly seemed to fall short in March and April. Lefty Driesell. Gene Keady. Eddie Sutton. Mark Few, Norm Stewart.
What would the basketball world be howling at them if they coached a team with three first-round NBA draft picks that made one field goal in the final 10 1/2 minutes and lost a national semifinal game the way that Jon Scheyer’s Duke squad melted away at closing time in the Blue Devils’ loss to Houston Saturday night?
Can’t draw up an out-of-bounds play.
Can’t win the big one.
Crunch-time choker.
Now that the men’s college basketball season is over and before everybody returns to hyperventilating about the transfer portal, I believe there is one grand takeaway from the 68-team NCAA Tournament slugfest Florida just survived: This cruel, relentlessly difficult and always fascinating tournament routinely humbles even the best, the brightest and most admired coaches.
Some coaches just walk away with more publicity bruises than others. We’ll see how history treats Sampson and Scheyer. Probably kinder than it treated Lewis, Driesell and others.
All these coaches break down video Zapruder style. They have armies of assistants fine-tuning game plans. They pinpoint weak spots on the opposing teams. They hand their players thick scouting reports outlining their advantages.
They recruit sports psychologists to assist their players to stand and deliver when the lights are brightest.
And then somehow there is a cleanup on aisle one.
Rick Pitino will have to clear a wall to hang all the national coach of the year awards he’s won this season. He did fabulous work coaching St. John’s to the No. 5 ranking in the AP poll. He got my vote in two coach of the year ballots.
There was nothing fabulous about the way Pitino and his team handled their second-round NCAA Tournament game.
Not only did the Red Storm lose a game the world expected them to win against John Calipari’s underachieving Arkansas team, St. John’s was the only 1- or 2-seed that failed to make the Sweet Sixteen.
And the loss ended in a harshly similar manner to the way Pitino teams ended seasons at Louisville and Kentucky — with his leading scorer and Go-To guy (this time R.J. Luis) parked in the coach’s doghouse.
Just like Terrence Williams fell out of favor when Louisville was upset by Michigan State in 2009.
Just like Rodrick Rhodes was the fall guy when Kentucky lost to North Carolina in 1995.
Yes, this tournament can fry the central nervous system of Hall of Fame coach with two national titles.
Matt Painter of Purdue does not have a national championship — yet. He has not joined Pitino, Calipari and Tom Izzo in the Hall of Fame — yet.
But Painter is generally considered one of the game’s best tacticians, a guy who regularly does more with less than many of the game’s biggest names. Painter succeeds by building culture and recruiting to his culture. He’s also considered a top strategist.
The final seconds of Purdue’s Sweet Sixteen game against Houston at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis March 28 demanded strategy. Rallying from a 10-point deficit in front of a strong pro-Purdue crowd, the Boilermakers tied the game at 60 in the final minute.
Houston ball under the Cougars’ basket. Only 2.8 seconds to play. Timeout. These are the moments when coaches earn their mammoth salaries.
Painter and his staff knew what was coming. They’d scouted it on video a million times. They had the Purdue players in the correct defensive alignment.
Until they didn’t.
Houston’s Milos Uzan inbounded the ball near the Cougars’ basket with Purdue’s Braden Smith defending the inbounder.
Smith saw Houston guard L.J. Cryer racing off a screen to where Purdue expected Cryer to go, toward the right baseline for an easy 12-footer. Smith left Uzan to defend Cryer.
Purdue smothered Plan A. Purdue whiffed on Plan B.
Instead of throwing the ball to Cryer, Uzan gave it to Joseph Tugler on the left side of the lane. Uzan stepped in bounds. Nobody from Purdue defended him. Tugler gave Uzan the ball.
Houston scored and won from 2 feet not 12.
Imagine if that happened to a coach that everybody thinks cannot coach.
That performance, of course, elevated Sampson to genius status. Then he ascended to St. Kelvin when his team took it up a notch while shutting down Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, Khaman Maluach and the rest of Scheyer’s dream team over the final 10 1/2 minutes Saturday.
On Monday night, Sampson was this close to joining the Champions Club.
Up 12 with less than 16 minutes to play. Up 11 with less than 14 minutes to play. Up six with about 9 minutes to play. Up three with 4:17 to go.
Up one with 2:05 to play, a 63-62 lead that stretched into the final 46 seconds.
Here is a play-by-play look at Houston’s final possessions:
A blocked 3-point shot
A missed jumper
A turnover by Tugler at 1:21
A turnover by Cryer at 0:52
A turnover by Emmanuel Sharp at 0:26
A baffling turnover by Sharp in the final seconds as Houston burned away the final 19 seconds without getting a field goal attempt.
Despite his coaching genius, Kelvin Sampson did not join the Champions Club. He took his spot next to Guy V. Lewis as a perplexing loser in the national championship game.
This tournament has a way of making any coaching reputation crumble
