Houston Is An Imposing Foe In The 2025 Final Four

Don’t underestimate the culture that Kelvin Sampson has built at Houston.

With Duke and Houston set to tip off in the Final Four Saturday, we’re going to talk about different aspects of that matchup during the week as we get ready for the big game. Let’s start by talking about Houston’s dominating win over Tennessee on Sunday.

And let’s be clear: Houston was super. They were relentless. They defended. They got to loose balls and they went after rebounds like they were North Koreans who were told they’d be in, uh, big trouble if they didn’t.

Kelvin Sampson has built a tremendous culture in Houston and it’s very different from what Guy Lewis had during his glory runs in the 1960’s and 1980’s.

Those teams were dominated by superstars. Houston had Don Chaney and Elvin Hayes from 1966 to 1968 and made two Final Fours.

And in the 1980’s, Lewis had an amazing roster with Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Ricky Winslow (who’s son Justise helped Duke win the 2015 national championship), Michael Young, Larry Micheaux and the great Benny Anders. He wasn’t really great, at least not compared to Olajuwon and Drexler, but after Phi Slamma Jamma dunked all over Louisville in the 1983 semifinals, Anders crowed “we took ‘em to the rack and we stuck ‘em.”

Sampson’s teams are not about glitz. They’re all about grit.

They’re not the biggest team in the world. When you look at the primary players, Joseph Tugler is 6-8/230. J’Wan Roberts is 6-8/230.

Jacob McFarland is 6-11/215 and Cedric Lath is 6-9/260 but McFarland is redshirting after breaking his leg in October and Lath only plays 5.6 minutes so basically the big guys are 6-8.

The other three starters are Milos Uzan (6-6), Emanuel Sharp (6-3) and LJ Cryer (6-1).

Duke’s size advantage is obvious, with Khaman Maluach (7-2), Cooper Flagg (6-9), Kon Knueppel (6-6), Tyrese Proctor (6-6), Sion Love (6-6), Patrick Ngongba (6-11), Maliq Brown (6-9), Mason Gillis (6-6), Isaiah Evan (6-6) and Caleb Foster (6-5).

However, Sampson has said previously that he looks for “dogs” and he has some. Cryer is a senior who started at Baylor.

Uzon is a junior who started at Oklahoma.

Mylik Wilson is a senior who has been at Louisiana, Texas Tech and now Houston.

Tugler, Arceneaux, Roberts, Francis, Ramon Walker and Lath are all Sampson recruits.

What we loved about this team’s performance against Tennessee was the hardass nature of the team. And not to knock them, because this is more of a compliment than an insult, but no one other than Tugler has gotten much NBA buzz, and Tugler has gotten a bit despite his still-rough offensive skills.

Much like Duke, this group has become a real team. In a sense, it reminds us of UNC’s 1993 national championship team. The starters there were Eric Montross, George Lynch, Brian Reese, Derrick Phelps and Donald Williams. That was sort of the ultimate Dean Smith team. None of them had much success in the NBA except for the late Montross, and at one point, he held the record for being traded the most.

But all those guys were dogs. Absolute dogs. Montross was big and slow and he was a warrior. Phelps was a pure point guard. Williams was a great shooter, Lynch a tough forward, and Reese was a solid complimentary wing.

Those guys took down the Fab Five. Don't think Houston couldn’t do something similar.

The other thing that impressed us was that while Tennessee had some nice looks on Sunday, they just missed. Our guess is that the Cougars were so in their head that they expected them to come flying out of nowhere to go after the shot.

Tennessee shot just 17.2 percent on threes and 28.8 percent overall.

However, it’s not like Houston just killed it on offense. The Coogs hit 36 percent on their threes (9-25) and 42.4 percent overall (28-66).

Sharp took 10 of those 25, hitting four. Cryer hit 2-8. Arceneaux was 2-3 and Wilson was 1-2.

Back to the defense for a minute: it’s also important to remember that Houston crucified Tennessee on defense even with limited minutes from Roberts, who got two early fouls and ultimately played just 16 minutes.

Defensively it probably didn’t matter much because Tugler has a 7-6 wingspan and can defend any position on the court.

Offensively though, Roberts shot 4-6 so presumably he would have been a bigger factor without foul trouble (he finished with four).

The bottom line about this team is while there are no superstars, there are also no prima donnas. They stick together and they win together. And winning is the expectation they have every time. Duke is going to have to really bring it to win this one.