Houston has registered a top-10 defense in each of the past five years. Last season, the Cougars ranked first in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to BartTorvik.com. So there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that if you ever need multiple stops in the final seconds of a one-point game to secure a victory, having five dudes in Cougars jerseys is probably your best bet.
It certainly was Sunday.
Final score: Houston 73, Auburn 72.
Steven Pearl’s Tigers actually had three different opportunities to take the lead in the final 15 seconds. The first two were shots, both from Tahaad Pettiford, both of which were blocked. The last opportunity was an inbounds pass that was broken up at the buzzer, allowing the Cougars to escape with a nice non-league victory away from home in their first contest this season against a top-100 team.
“I’m glad we won,” said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson. “But I don’t know if I’d feel any differently about where this team can be even if we had lost.”
Translation: Sampson knows, once again, that he has a team capable of winning a third straight Big 12 title and first national championship. The culture at Houston is just so strong, and perhaps the best example of such came in those final 15 seconds against Auburn.
With starting bigs Chris Cenac Jr. and Joseph Tugler fouled-out, the Cougars, as previously noted, ended up needing three stops in the final 15 seconds to win.
They got them.
The first stop came courtesy of a block from Kingston Flemings. The second stop came courtesy of a block from Kalifa Sakho. Worth noting: Flemings is a freshman and Sakho is a transfer from Sam Houston State. Neither was on Houston’s team that played in the title game of the 2025 NCAA Tournament. But, just four games into their Houston careers, they were out there on the court, on a big stage, against a ranked team from the SEC, making game-saving plays, one after another, as men in Houston uniforms tend to do since Sampson rebuilt this program into one of the sport’s best.
Houston remains No. 2 in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Purdue is No. 1 for the ninth consecutive day. Next up for the Cougars is Thursday’s game against Rider. After that, they’ll travel for the Players Era Men’s Championship in Las Vegas, where they’ll meet Syracuse next Monday and Tennessee next Tuesday.
Top 25 And 1 rankings