Kelvin Sampson reflects on emotions of national championship loss, final play

Kelvin Sampson had a lot of emotions running through his head as his Houston squad fell short in the national championship game. The 65-63 loss to Florida might be remembered simply for the final possession where the Cougars could not get a shot off with just under 20 seconds to go.

It might be a sequence that Sampson replays in his head for quite awhile. Until next season of course, when Houston could very well compete for the national title once again.

But it’ll haunt him for a bit. Sampson and his players will be reeling through the offseason.

“Yeah, I’m just going through those last two possessions more than anything else,” Sampson said postgame. “Incomprehensible in that situation we couldn’t get a shot, couldn’t get a shot. We’re down two, and obviously we didn’t need a three. But with Emanuel, we were struggling to score the entire second half. We got good looks. But Florida was doing a good job running us off the line and forcing us to score it. We just didn’t do a very good job of finishing some shots.

“Guys that have been in the paint scoring all year… L.J. developed a really good runner, floater. I didn’t go very much tonight. Milos. Give Florida credit, too. I’m not going to sit up here and poor mouth, pity mouth us. We held that team to 65 points. Clayton and Martin combined to go 5 for 20. If you would have told me we would hold those two guys 5 for 20 … We had a good plan. We just didn’t score it well enough to win. Scored it well enough to be in a position to win. At the end you’ve got to get a shot. Got to do better than that.”

Sampson then had to explain what Houston was trying to get out of the last play. Unfortunately, the Cougars could not get a shot off.

“Yeah, we have a set where it’s a staggered gait,” Sampson said. “We thought if we could get Emanuel to shot fake and get downhill — I have to look back at the film. I don’t know if the ball slipped out of his hands … Probably should have shot faked that. Both those guys, (Will) Richard and (Alijah) Martin, both really good defensively. Clayton made a great play on that.

“That’s why you got to shot fake and get in the paint. Two is fine. J’Wan has been awesome all year. Tonight was not his night. Florida was really physical with the way they were chucking and bumping when he was going in. He had a lot of balls that just fell right off the rim, seems like. So at the end of the day they scored 65, we scored 63. They struggled scoring on us and we struggled scoring on them. When it gets down to the two best teams left, it’s not going to be easy for either team.”