J’Wan Roberts checks out for Houston
With 13:12 left in the first half, Cougars big man J’Wan Roberts gets his first rest of the game after grabbing three offensive rebounds and blocking a shot in his first seven minutes of game action. Houston scored soon after to take a 12-10 lead.
Star guards still need to settle down
After over eight minutes of play, both teams senior star guards are scoreless.
Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. and Houston’s L.J. Cryer have 0 points on a combined 0-of-6 shooting.
Not the best shooting start
The action has been entertaining though not particularly crisp to start.
With 15:05 left in the first half, Florida and Houston have combined to hit only 7 of their 20 field-goal attempts so far — a 35% field-goal percentage.
The Cougars would probably like this game to stay more of a defensive battle.
Houston and Florida are tied after five minutes
This game is tied at 8-8 with five minutes gone in the first half. Alex Condon, who was severely limited in Saturday’s semifinal for Florida, already has four points for the Gators.
Houston winning the fan battle
Reporting from San Antonio
Definitely louder cheers for Houston in the dome tonight, perhaps due to the “home” state advantage. Houston is just a drive away from San Antonio, meaning many of these fans didn’t have to go very far to make it tonight.
Houston is my pick
Houston 68, Florida 65
Even Phi Slamma Jamma didn’t reach the heights the Cougars did Saturday while rallying from 14 points down to beat Duke. That performance imbued Houston with a confidence that will carry them to its first national championship.
We are under way in San Antonio!
Houston and Florida have tipped off in tonight’s championship game. Houston had the ball first but their first shot rimmed out.
Before the national title game, the mascots square off
Reporting from San Antonio
More impressive Final Four comeback: Houston or Florida?
Without a doubt it was Houston’s, for two reasons. Though Houston’s defense was ranked as the best in the country this season in field-goal percentage allowed and total points allowed, Duke’s historically efficient offense presented its most difficult challenge.
Not only did the Blue Devils bog down offensively in the second half, they went more than seven minutes without a field goal, an absurd drought given Duke’s talent. Perhaps the even harder challenge for Houston, however, was finding enough offense to complete the comeback.
Scoring has never come easily for Kelvin Sampson’s teams in recent seasons, and though this year’s team is much more dangerous, it still doesn’t often produce points in bunches. Emanuel Sharp won’t have to pay for a meal the rest of his life around Houston’s campus with the way he shot the ball in the final minutes.
Florida’s target: 70 points
Houston’s defense led the nation this season by averaging 58 points allowed; only four teams were able to score more than 70 points. That’s an important threshold, however, because the Cougars are 33-0 when they allow 69 points or fewer but 2-4 when they allow 70-plus.
Why does that number matter? Largely it’s a function of Houston’s offense not matching up well in a shootout. The Cougars actually have shot the ball well, making 39.9% of their 3-pointers, but on average they’re scoring about 12 fewer points per game than Florida. The Gators will want to run to score quickly, while Houston prefers to play methodically.
Cougars coach can make history
With a win tonight, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson, 69, would become the oldest coach to win an NCAA men’s basketball championship. Jim Calhoun was 68 when Connecticut won in 2011.
“When you’re pushing 70, you look at things a lot differently,” Sampson told reporters yesterday. “Last night I got so many texts, I haven’t returned any, there are too many … but I saw Tubby [Smith] and Rick Barnes and Tom Izzo and [Gregg Popovich] and a bunch of the older coaches, and they all kind of had a similar message to me. You know, ‘Win one for the old guys’ or something like that.”
‘We’re No. 1!’
No matter the result tonight, the matchup of two No. 1 seeds guarantees that for the 26th time since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, the national champ will be a No. 1 seed. Of the last 18 champions, including tonight’s, 14 will have been top seeds.
First NCAA Tournament meeting
Houston and Florida are playing each other for the first time in an NCAA Tournament, and this is only the third meeting all time. The last was in 1973. That was more than a decade before Florida coach Todd Golden, 39, was even born.
