Final seconds that saved Houston’s championship hopes in the Sweet 16

INDIANAPOLIS – One play. One killing play that was really plan B. One pass. One marvelous pass from a post player who hadn’t had an assist all night. One layup. One wide-open layup with 0.9 seconds left.

Then, the Houston Cougars could finally exhale with a 62-60 win and get rid of persistent Purdue, its wizard of a point guard and its thunderous crowd. Houston was the first No. 1 seed to peer over the edge of the cliff this March.

“That’s the only thing you can ask, for your team to give everything they had,” Purdue coach Matt Painter would say afterward. “Houston was one play better than us.”

About that one play. Milos Uzan’s layup in the final second settled the game, but that was the simple part.

How many twists of fate can be squeezed into 2.8 seconds? For Uzan, an Oklahoma Sooner last year, to make maybe the most important basket of the season so far for Houston. For Joseph Tugler, to make an impromptu bounce pass that allowed his beleaguered team to play another day, arguably the most important assist so far of the NCAA tournament, which is saying something for a 6’8″ post player. For Braden Smith, the fearless Purdue guard who was everywhere on offense, keeping the Boilermakers in the hunt, but at this particular moment felt he had no choice but to zig when it might have been better to zag.

All thrown together for a play that will linger for two programs and maybe this entire tournament, depending upon where Houston goes from there.

The score was tied 60-60, Purdue having rallied from 10 points down. The Boilermakers had made 11 field goals in the second half. Smith had assisted on all 11 of them. Painter would say later he had never seen such a thing before. “He took us out of our (defensive) principles basically,” Houston guard L.J. Cryer said in the Cougars’ relieved locker room. “And he picked us apart.”

But at this moment, it was Smith’s defensive assignment that would put him in the middle of this crossroads. Houston had possession on the baseline, 2.8 seconds left, having had a play review go its way over who touched the ball last during a rebound scrum, the Cougars’ 16th offensive rebound of the night.

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The play was to go to Cryer coming off a screen to the right corner. He is Houston’s big-shot maker even if he was 2-for-13 at the time. Smith was guarding Uzan, the inbounds passer, but felt he had no choice but to follow the open Cryer. The problem was he might have gone out a little far, and no one else rotated in.  Cox would have probably been the guy and there was a hole in the middle.

Uzan quickly changed the play and passed to Tugler, who realized that with Smith gone and no other Boilermaker diving in, Uzan would be the most open Houston basketball player on the planet. He immediately bounced the ball back to Uzan. Game, set, match. A ticket to the Elite Eight for Houston, a punch in the gut for Purdue.

Over on the sideline, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson pumped his arms in glee. Gee, had that play worked.

So many ifs. If there is no review, maybe Houston has no time to huddle together and organize its thoughts. If Cryer isn’t so open off the screen, if Smith doesn’t decide to go so far out, if Cox rolls in to help, if Uzan passes the ball where it was originally supposed to go, if Tugler feels the heat of the dwindling clock and hurries a shot, if Purdue could have grabbed one more defensive rebound  . . . everything changes. The Boilermakers were charging and the crowd was becoming a bigger factor. The Cougars did not want to chance overtime.

Afterward, they all had their view.

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Tugler: “It was a busted play. Somebody else got to be open. They’ve got to leave somebody.  I just bounced it toward the basket.”

Cryer:  “It wasn’t the play we had drawn up. We broke it off to be honest. JoJo played off his instincts and made a good pass back to Milos.  He makes plays like that all the time but in that moment it’s magnified. It’s two seconds left and not everybody sees that play. He always makes little plays where it’s like, man, coach did not draw that up but he just does it on his own. That was just another one of the moments and this time it was the biggest moment.”

Sampson: “We call that a three read where they took away the first option, but our discipline allowed us to get to the second option, and then the read allowed us to get to the third option. Helped bail us out, so we move on. You get to the Sweet 16, every game is a fistfight.

“I think (Cryer) dragged two guys with him, which means we were four on three, and we’re always talking to our guys about hunting numbers advantages. Once you have the number advantage, now it becomes the right read.”

“That’s why you work on that stuff day after day after day, you never know when you’re going to need it.”

Smith: “We knew that they were going to come off the back screen and Cryer was going to get that shot in the corner. We’ve seen it in film. I was just trying to take that away. As we did that, C.J. or whoever it was, we switch it and he takes it and goes back to the ball. I don’t know, I could have stayed. There’s a lot of different things that could have went into it. I just didn’t want Cryer coming off to hit that shot.”

As huge last-second baskets in Houston tournament games go, this was almost the reverse of Lorenzo Charles’ famous dunk for North Carolina State to beat the Cougars in the 1983 title game. To be sure, that one was for the national championship and much more significant. But this one might come to mean more and more if the Cougars keep rolling.

So ended a loud night where Houston had to deal both with Purdue resolve and the Boilermakers’ crowd. It led to something of a frantic battle, where Houston kept grabbing for control and Purdue would never quite go away.

“Up and down, up and down, they had their way, we had our way,” Tugler said.

“It was an advantage, but not nearly as bad as playing at Kansas or playing at Arizona or playing at Iowa State or playing at West Virginia,” Sampson said of the pro-Purdue Lucas Oil Stadium. “That’s why I didn’t make a big deal out of it.”

Cryer mentioned how the crowd, when the Boilermakers rallied, ‘makes you feel like your back is against the wall a little bit.’ The Cougars did seem a little wobbly toward the end.

Until the last 2.8 seconds. Joseph Tugler’s only fourth assist in the past seven games, and maybe the biggest pass so far in his life.