Houston tops Oregon State, reaches 1st Final Four since ’84

INDIANAPOLIS — Houston overcame a blown 17-point lead to hold off Oregon State 67-61 on Monday night in the NCAA Tournament, reaching the Final Four for the first time in 37 years.

Quentin Grimes hit a 3-pointer with 3:21 left to break a 55-all tie. The second-seeded Cougars (28-3) spent the first half building a big lead behind a dominant defence, but they spent the second half hanging on as the 12th-seeded Beavers tried to add one more surprising result to a Midwest Region bracket beset by upsets.

Grimes’ 3 from near the top of the arc finally steadied the Cougars, and Houston knocked down enough free throws down the stretch while holding Oregon State without a basket during a critical 3 1/2 minutes.

That sent the Cougars on to the national semifinals to face the Arkansas-Baylor winner.

It wasn’t always pretty, with Houston shooting 29% after halftime and 32% for the game. Yet it also exemplified the program’s rugged defence-first identity under Kelvin Sampson, who has led Houston to accomplishments it hadn’t matched since the famed “Phi Slama Jama” days of the 1980s.

Marcus Sasser scored 20 points to lead Houston while Grimes added 18. Fittingly, it was DeJon Jarreau — the American Athletic Conference’s defensive player of the year who led the effort that stymied Oregon State star Ethan Thompson — who was named the most outstanding player of the Midwest Region.

Jarreau finished with 10 points, eight rebounds and eight assists two days after flirting with another triple-double and shutting down Syracuse’s Buddy Boeheim in the Sweet 16.

This will be Houston’s first Final Four since Hakeem Olajuwon and coach Guy Lewis led the Cougars to the 1984 title game, in which they lost to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown. When this one was over, Houston’s players sprinted to midcourt to celebrate, then migrated to the corner of the court near the Houston fan section and started jumping around — and on top of each other — in a celebratory mob.

Jarreau shared a long embrace with Sampson at midcourt, the reward for Sampson in his seventh season of returning a once-proud program to national prominence.

Maurice Calloo scored 13 points to lead Oregon State (20-13), which was vying to become the worst-seeded team ever to make a Final Four. But Thompson finished with 11 points on 3-for-12 shooting after averaging 20.3 points in the Beavers’ NCAA victories against Tennessee, Oklahoma State and Loyola Chicago.

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Aaron Beard, The Associated Press