It’s easy to take for granted what the University of Houston men’s basketball team has accomplished.
When you think about it, it almost makes sense to expect Kelvin Sampson’s team to advance to the Round of 16 in every NCAA Tournament when you consider the recent history. Six straight marches, and six consecutive Sweet 16 appearances.
The Midwest No.1 seed Cougars are back in the Round of 16 after holding off No.8 seed Gonzaga in Saturday’s hard-fought second-round game. They move on to face fourth-seeded Purdue on March 28 in the Regional Semifinals.
HOUSTON HANGS ON TO DEFEAT NO. 8 GONZAGA 🤯 THE COOGS ARE HEADING TO THEIR SIXTH CONSECUTIVE SWEET 16 💪 pic.twitter.com/SoS8Bvt60D
— College Basketball Report (@CBKReport) March 23, 2025
After decades of the program underachieving, advancing to the Sweet 16 is now just what the Cougars do.
But looking at it just that way, you are missing what’s happening here. Sampson has brought some good teams into the NCAA Tournament during his tenure in Third Ward. Still, this collection of Coogs is special. It seems poised to make it to the Final Four and complete the dance that Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon and Phi Slamma Jamma couldn’t in their back-to-back national championship appearances in 1983 and 1984.
“This is number six for us, and I hope people don’t take this for granted either,” Sampson said.
The Big 12 champion Cougars are favorites to make a deep run this year because of how the game has changed and how the NIL and transfer portal—even more so than the NBA’s one-and-done rule—have obliterated continuity and team chemistry. But the biggest thing is that these Coogs are just that good and that deep.
Watching Sampson work his inside-outside wizardry with senior guard LJ Cryer and forward J’Wan Roberts has been fun. Then you have sophomore forward Joseph Tugler, who is good for a double-double, while Emanuel Sharp can light it up from just about anywhere.
During Saturday night’s second-round matchup against Gonzaga, featuring two of the most successful programs in this era of NCAA Tournament play, we saw the brilliance of this team for about the first three-and-half quarters of the game as UH completed dominated a team that was aiming for its 10th-straight Sweet 16 appearance.
The Cougars, 32-4 and ranked No.2 in the nation, made many poor decisions late, but clutch free throws by Milos Uzan and Cryer helped preserve the 81-76 win over the Bulldogs. It seemed ridiculous to waste a matchup between these two programs in a second-round game, but it gave the attendees in Wichita their money’s worth, nonetheless.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who turned his mid-major into a wildly successful program like Sampson initially did with the Cougars before the move to the Big 12, returned a believer Saturday.
“I’m telling you, man, Houston, until you experience them live and in person, they’re something,” Few said. “Kelvin has got them not only playing just exceptional defense, it’s harder than heck to run anything and consistently get any good looks, but also offensively.”
But now comes the hard part.
While the Cougars have made it a habit of making it to the Regional Semifinals Round, getting beyond this point has been the issue. This is the third straight year that the Cougars have advanced to the Sweet 16 as a No.1 seed, but this has also been where their tournament run has ended in the last two years after falling to No.5 Miami and No. 4 Duke in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Only in 2021 did UH advance all the way to the Final Four before losing to Baylor. Then, in 2022, the fifth-seeded Cougars stunned No.1 Arizona in the Sweet 16 before falling to Villanova in the Elite Eight. In short, there is still work to be done with teams like Purdue and Kentucky in the Cougars’ immediate future should they survive the Boilermakers.
