Houston Can Deliver Another Big Win for BBN in the National Championship

The SEC can definitively prove that it was the best conference in the history of college basketball if Florida cuts down the nets and wins its third National Title.

Playing the “It Just Means More” card was fun during the regular season. After the league struggled for years to put out more than 4-5 competent teams, it was a refreshing change of pace. That was particularly the case for Kentucky fans in Louisville. UofL fans pumped their chests after every win, forcing Kentucky fans to remind them that they were beating up C-USA caliber teams, while the Cats competed against Top 15 teams on a weekly basis.

The strength of a conference matters ahead of Selection Sunday. Now that we’ve reached the final game of the 2024-25 season, no Kentucky fan in their right mind should want to see Florida win another National Championship.

I grew up watching Matt Walsh and Joakim Noah become the most obnoxious Kentucky basketball villains. For more than a decade, the Gators were Kentucky’s biggest SEC rival. Seeing Noah do the Gator Chomp after winning a title is an image I wish I could erase from my brain. That school has enough success in football and baseball. We can’t let them get back to the top of the college basketball mountain.

Fortunately, Kelvin Sampson is here to slay the dragon, again.

The Cougars escaped the Sweet 16 with a win on a baseline out-of-bounds play against Purdue in the final seconds. Kentucky fans had to eat an NCAA Tournament loss to the Tennessee Volunteers. Thankfully, Sampson and the Houston Cougars were waiting to give them an ass-whooping unlike anything we’ve ever seen, allowing BBN to remind the Vols for another year that they have still never made a Final Four.

In San Antonio, Houston faced the baddest of the bad guys in college basketball, Duke. The Blue Devils were being talked about as one of the greatest teams ever assembled, led by Cooper Flagg, the so-called greatest freshman in the sport’s history (how quickly people forget about Anthony Davis). Duke led by double-digits for most of the second half, were up nine points with less than 90 seconds to play, and six with 30 seconds to go.

A normal team would have folded like a cheap tent. Not Houston. Instead, it was Duke that melted down, unlike any other team we’ve seen in the Final Four. Kelvin Sampson used his tenacious defense to slay the dragon. Now there’s only one left.

Styles make fights, and the Houston defense is perfectly capable of turning the National Championship into a rock fight. Florida prefers to play with pace, but they’ve shown multiple times during this NCAA Tournament that they can get slowed down by a physical opponent. When things get tight, Walter Clayton Jr. bails them out. Can he do it again?

Houston is a No. 1 seed, but they’re an underdog worth cheering for. In the 80s, the shoe was on the other foot as Phi Slamma Jamma was the victim of one of the sport’s greatest upsets. They’ve been to seven Final Fours and have never won a National Championship.

Kelvin Sampson was nearly black-listed from the sport. He resurrected the dormant program and ended the school’s 35-year Sweet 16 drought. Now, he can triumph with a title in San Antonio. He can do it by taking down one of Kentucky’s most hated SEC rivals. For the third game in a row, it’s time for Kelvin Sampson to put on his ill-fitting polo suit of armor and slay the dragon.