JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The men's NCAA national championship tonight features two basketball teams you can never give up on - the University of Houston and the University of Florida. Both teams pulled off historic comebacks in the semifinals on Saturday to reach the title game tonight in San Antonio. Texas Public Radio's Dan Katz is here with the latest. Hey there.
DAN KATZ, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: So Dan, let's start with the Houston Cougars. It appears that this is just a huge moment for this program on the rise. And I bet it probably doesn't hurt either that this game is being held about three hours from their campus.
KATZ: No, not at all. There are more than 100,000 people here right now for the games, and you can see that Houston Cougar red all over the San Antonio River Walk. They've been celebrating that comeback win on Saturday night over Duke that shocked the sports world and the 68,000-plus at the Alamodome. Houston was down 14 points with a few minutes left, and they went on a mammoth 11-1 run to pull off the win.
SUMMERS: I mean, this was an incredible situation. Depending on whether you're a fan rooting for Duke or rooting for Houston, that was either an epic comeback or just a totally epic collapse.
KATZ: Well, Houston's coach Kelvin Sampson wanted to make it clear that his team made their own luck and deserves to be here in the championship. Sampson turns 70 later this year and took a moment to reflect on how much tonight's game means.
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KELVIN SAMPSON: I used to come to the tournament when I was a young coach, and I would sit in those stands and look at the two coaches in the championship game and, you know, you'd think you'd like to be there one day. So for me, it's a lot of gratitude, a lot of appreciation for having this opportunity.
KATZ: And they've had a great season - 35-4 and were the Big 12 Conference champions. Yes, they didn't have a possible generational talent like Duke's Cooper Flagg, but they play a style of basketball that you don't see much nowadays. They play a smashmouth defense team basketball, and they try to make the other team make mistakes, like what happened against Duke.
SUMMERS: Coach Kelvin Sampson has been around the game for decades, and he has also been on this sort of long road to redemption, right?
KATZ: That's right. Some might remember that Sampson was actually forced out at Indiana in 2008, and that's when he was hired by his close friend, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, as an assistant. And that resurrected his career with the Spurs and the Milwaukee Bucks and the Houston Rockets before he came to the University of Houston in 2014. And since then, Sampson has retooled his approach to coaching and his style of basketball. And the Houston team has had several deep tournament runs, but they haven't made it all the way. The program has had such greats like Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler come so close also back in the '80s, and Houston fans feel that this could be their moment.
SUMMERS: Standing in their way, of course, is this very formidable Florida Gators team. Can you talk a little bit more about how that matchup might play out tonight?
KATZ: Yeah. Florida has one of the best offenses and has been one of the most exciting teams to watch all season long. Their star guard Walter Clayton Jr. - remember that name - has scored 30 points in their last two games, and that is a playoff feat not accomplished since Larry Bird. And they have several bigs who can really shoot the ball alongside Clayton that helped them pull off a dramatic comeback win of their own in three of the rounds against UConn, Texas Tech and then Auburn in the Final Four.
SUMMERS: I mean, the Gators are a super-scrappy, super-flashy team. And also, they've been here before.
KATZ: That's right, three times before - in 2000, when they were the runners-up, and in 2006 and 2007, when they won back-to-back national championships. And they're a slight favorite to win coming out of the dominant SEC conference, but what it will all come down to is the top offense Florida versus top defense Houston and which team with that never-say-die approach can pull off that last run. And clearly, as we've seen in this tournament, if one team has a big lead at halftime, maybe stick around a little while to see how the game ends.
SUMMERS: I'm definitely going to be watching tonight. That is Texas Public Radio's Dan Katz. Dan, thank you.
KATZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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