By Chris Schumerth | @ChrisSchumerth
Sports Capital Journalism Program
INDIANAPOLIS — After Camden Heide’s 3-pointer tied the game and sent the Purdue fans in Lucas Oil Stadium into a frenzy with 35 seconds to go, it looked like the Houston Cougars, the Midwest Regional’s top seed, were in danger of losing in the Sweet 16 for a third season in a row.
Maybe it was better, then, that Milos Uzan, the 6-foot-4 Houston junior, had spent the previous two seasons on the Oklahoma roster so he would have a less visceral memory of the Sweet 16 losses to Duke last year and Miami the year before.
Houston’s unforgettable out-of-bounds play resulted in Uzan’s last-second, game-winning basket in Houston’s 62-60 victory.
Just when it looked like Houston and Purdue might be in for an after-midnight overtime session, the Cougars had one more chance with the ball under their basket with 2.8 seconds to go.
Uzan took the ball out of bounds, and forward J’Wan Roberts lined up in front of Cryer on the left elbow. Roberts cut to the corner to clear out space, and Cryer set a screen for Emanuel Sharp in the middle of the court. Sharp was trying to get to the left wing but wasn’t open.
Then Cryer got an angled screen from sophomore Joseph Tugler, and while Uzan couldn’t get it to Cryer across the court, Smith had needed to shoot out from his position of covering the in bounder to help on Cryer.
Tugler pivoted and rolled. He was open in the area where Roberts and Cryer had started, and Uzan found him before wisely stepping over the baseline and toward the basket, unguarded. Tugler got the ball right back to Uzan, and the lead was theirs with 0.9 seconds to play.
Houston (33-4) advanced to the Midwest final against Tennessee on Sunday afternoon, its eighth Elite Eight appearance and the first in three years. The Cougars will be playing for what would be a seventh spot in the Final Four, the first since 2021, and a chance to win the school’s first national championship.
For one night, the simple play that created the shocking finish connected this Houston generation to the days of Elvin Hayes in the 1960s and the Phi Slama Jama teams of the 1980s.
“It was a three-option read,” said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. “…We didn’t have to draw up a new play. I told my assistant coaches that when they become head coaches, don’t try to be the smartest guy in the room by drawing up a tricky play at the end of the game. Run something that you’ve practiced and repped over and over and over so that so that they’ll have confidence…You could tell that our kids had run that play all the way to the third option…A lot of times basketball is about math. When L drew 2, that means we were 4 on 3.”
On a night when Houston’s leading scorer, grad student L.J. Cryer, was held to five points on 2-for-13 shooting — Purdue’s Braden Smith did much of the harassing with occasional spells from C.J. Cox — time and time again it was Uzan who punched back. His 6-for-9 shooting from the 3-point line helped the rest of his team overcome 3-for-14 shooting that begged for a March upset.
Uzan scored 22 points with six assists. Sharp scored 17 on 5-for-14 shooting. “Tough night for us, our main guys, Cryer and Sharp,” Sampson said. “But I thought Purdue played really tough defensively, too. A lot of times coaches talk about what they didn’t do. Sometimes you have to give the other team credit. I thought Purdue played hard. I thought their crowd was tremendous, so for us, just finding a way to win. It’s what we’ve been pretty good at all year.”
The matchup was Sampson’s first game coaching across from Purdue’s Matt Painter since Sampson’s last game at Indiana in 2008. Sampson had had little interest in talking about that nugget of sports history in the run-up to the game. “Doesn’t mean anything to me,” he’d said about being back in Indiana. “I’m just looking forward to playing Purdue.”
Purdue held a 31-29 halftime lead before the Cougars started the second half on an 11-1 run. The deficit for the Boilermakers was 10 when they called timeout with 7:55 left.
Two 3-pointers by Heide — fans may remember the sophomore forward’s posterizing dunk to follow up a Zach Edey miss in the 2024 national championship loss to Connecticut – helped Purdue close the gap in the game’s final 5:11.
The second one, a fadeaway from the right corner, had been assisted by Smith, just like every other field goal Purdue converted in the second half. Smith had 15 assists and just three turnovers, in spite of being targeted for double teams off ball screens all night by the Cougars.
“That’s kind of how we play in terms of putting the ball in his hands…in those short rolls, and then making decisions,” Painter said about his point guard. “…A lot’s determined by how they defend. How they defend on film is how they defended tonight. Braden’s a great decision maker.”
Purdue (24-12) lost for the ninth straight time to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Four of those losses were against the eventual national champion.
“You want to win every single game that we play,” Smith said. “And going down 10, a lot of teams give up like, oh, that’s game. I thought we fought really hard, and we dug down deep defensively to get those stops to come back, and we did everything we could, and we just had a little miscommunication at the end.
“And they converted on it, so props to them.”
