Inside Houston’s Final Four Mayhem Of Joy — Out Believing Duke, Hakeem The Happy Tourist, a Sampson Hug For All Time & J’Wan Turning Back Cooper Flagg

SAN ANTONIO — Mylik Wilson looks around the Alamodome at one point, with Duke rolling, with Kelvin Sampson’s team down 14 points to an energized Cooper Flagg, and he can’t see belief anywhere. Until he looks into his own huddle. Until he looks into his Houston teammates’ eyes. Until he listens to Sampson coaching as hard as ever in every huddle, every little pause in the action.

“I could tell that everybody else in the arena thought the game was over,” Wilson says. “But we didn’t.”

So Kelvin Sampson’s never-say-die Houston team — the one full of battlers who’ve been through heartbreak before, who came back together to run it back, who are so determined to be the UH team that gets their should be Hall of Fame coach his first natty — find a way. Play by play. Scrap by scrap. Clutch moment by clutch moment.

Houston 70, Duke 67. From left for dead to still dancing. From almost done to playing on Monday night, which is all Kelvin Sampson ever dared dream of. A chance to play in college basketball’s traditional Monday night national championship game.

Forty Minutes From Heaven.

After the final buzzer sounds in the Alamodome on one of the wildest Final Four games in history, Karen and Lauren Sampson, Kelvin Sampson wife of more than 44 years and his daughter, wrap each other up in a hug and keep telling each other one simple thing. “We’re playing on Monday night. We’re playing on Monday night.”

Karen Sampson’s voice catches a little as she retells the story, waiting outside another locker room for her guy.

Those five words represent so much for the Sampson family and this Houston program they brought back to a new glorious life. And the Sampsons haven’t just finally gotten to Monday night. They and this once in a lifetime team have brought an entire university, an entire city, right there with them.

Right there to that Monday night national championship game against fellow No.1 seed Florida (7:50 pm tip, CBS). This never-give-in, never-give-up Houston team is still standing. Somehow, someway. Together.

“We said it to these guys a lot here in the last month,” Kellen Sampson, the son and lead assistant, tells PaperCity. “This is going to be your favorite team you’ve ever been on. The brotherhood. The connectivity. The selflessness. The no ego. Just the awesome way that these guys love each other.”

When it all seems to be slipping away, these Cougars pull each other back into it.

“Just keep believing.” Wilson says of what Kelvin Sampson kept telling his team in those timeout huddles, what the players found themselves repeating to each other. “They was making tough shots and it felt like they could have got away. But we just kept believing in each other. We just kept fighting.

“And you saw what can happen.”

Houston happened. Kelvin Sampson’s culture, the one he’s painstakingly built, nurtured and fiercely protected over 11 seasons in The Third Ward happened. This UH team already won a no-way game eerily similar to this one this season. Coming back from six points down with 91 seconds left in regulation and six points down with eight seconds left in overtime to stun Kansas at Kansas, sending one of college basketball’s true cathedrals into utter shock.

Now Duke, the modern standard for college basketball in so many ways, is the one staggering away from another Cougar comeback for the ages. Only this one is in the Final Four, on college basketball’s ultimate stage. Against Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 overall NBA Draft pick to be, a player who is already being talked about as the next generational superstar. With Mike Krzyzewski sitting in the stands, watching, squirming like he’s being poked by a Blue Devil.

“I had deja vu of the Kansas game,” Mylik Wilson says.

“I could tell that everybody else in the arena thought the game was over. But we didn’t.” — UH guard Mylik Wilson

“The grit of our team,” longtime UH billionaire believer Tilman Fertitta tells PaperCity in the frenzied moments after the comeback, with a sea of red-clad Houston fans screaming and dancing in the stands and Hakeem Olajuwon, one of the 10 greatest NBA players of all time, turning to capture it all on his cellphone like just another proud Coog. “I mean I’m still trying to figure out how we did it. But Kelvin knocked it out one point at a time at the end.

“And we made the play. . . But this was a great Duke team. I think it’s one of the greatest college teams I’ve seen in a long time. But we beat ’em. And that’s all that matters.”

This Duke team could have three NBA lottery picks in this June’s draft. This UH team will have none (though sophomore forward JoJo Tugler sure could be one with another season or two in this development-driven Houston program). But LJ Cryer (26 points to give Houston’s comeback a chance), J’Wan Roberts, Milos Uzan, Emanuel Sharp and friends are 35-4, winners of 18 straight.

Game after game after game, win after win after win, they find a way. Leaning on each other.

“We all did this,” Tugler tells PaperCity. “This ain’t no one person fight.”

And oh how they did it, bringing back echoes of that crazy double comeback at Kansas, right down to the huge forced game-swinging turnover from UH’s inbounds defense. “That’s just this team,” Milos Uzan says. “This team’s special. We’re going to find a way to win.”

Play by play. Scrap by scrap. Clutch moment by clutch moment.

“I don’t think at any point in time there was anybody on the floor that didn’t believe,” Kellen Sampson says. “We’re a little bit like a Lone Ranger. As long as we’ve got a bullet in the chamber, we think we got a shot.”

A Comeback Of Different Coogs

These never-say-die Coogs create their own shot, moment by moment.

JoJo Tugler somehow doesn’t fall for shot fake after shot fake from 6-foot-7 Duke guard Kon Knueppel, stays down and blocks the NBA player to be, a play that UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson marvels at in the small coaches’ locker room afterwards. That keeps Houston within six points with under a minute left, allows Emanuel Sharp to put Sampson’s team down just three with a no-doubt, all-guts triple with 33 seconds left. Which sets up another signature Houston steal off an opponents’ inbounds, another moment when Sampson’s fighters turn what’s supposed to be one of the simplest plays in basketball into an absolute American Horror Story for their opponent, one that will haunt Duke for eons now.

Tugler’s fully extended 7-foot-6 wingspan gives baseline inbounds passers the same feeling that crooks in Gotham get when they see the Batman silhouette. Impending doom. This time, Tugler forces the wayward pass and Mylik Wilson uses his own long arms (especially for a 6-foot-3 guard) to steal it. Wilson will miss the triple, but Tugler is there to slam in a putback that pulls Houston within one point with 25 seconds left.

“I don’t think at any point in time there was anybody on the floor that didn’t believe. We’re a little bit like a Lone Ranger. As long as we’ve got a bullet in the chamber, we think we got a shot.” — UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson

Fittingly, J’Wan Roberts will take it from there. The sixth-year Houston forward who’s still undersized and overlooked out duels everyone’s Player of the Year in this Final Four semifinal’s close. Roberts’ perfect box out on a Duke free throw miss sees Cooper Flagg foul him with 19 seconds. Roberts, UH’s program beacon in so many ways, will go to the free throw line with a chance to give Houston the lead.

The stats say Roberts is a 59.1 percent career free-throw shooter. The 150 Free Throw Club that Kelvin Sampson instituted after that loss to Duke last March says something else. Roberts is one of seven Cougars who must make 150 free throws every day outside of practice, with Houston’s student managers charged with charting the results. While everyone else chalked up that Duke loss to the misfortune of all-everything point guard Jamal Shead tearing up his ankle, Kelvin and Kellen Sampson quickly determined that if Houston’s big guys hit their free throws, their team still would have won, still would have advanced.

And The 150 Club was born. “It’s 150 because 100 free throws wasn’t making enough of a difference,” Kellen Sampson reveals.

It’s sometimes a pain for J’Wan Roberts to get in all those free throws, to log 150 makes every day. But he still does it. He’s already won a few games for Houston with his late game free throws this season, including that win at Texas Tech. This time he wins an all-time Final Four game, hitting two to put Houston up 68-67, while urging everyone going crazy around him to calm down.

“I really wasn’t nervous at all,” Roberts says by his locker later.

Then UH’s recruiting afterthought — a player no other programs saw much use for – forces everybody’s next generational superstar into a tough contested miss with 3.7 seconds remaining.

“J’Wan deserves this,” Kelvin Sampson says. “He worked and worked to make it happen.

After it does, after the 69-year-old Sampson comes bouncing into the UH locker room like he’s back in college, Sampson and Roberts will slap the Houston placard on the supersized NCAA Tournament bracket on the national championship game spot together. Send Houston right into Monday night. As one.

Who’s going to dare stop believing now?