Don't Complain About Who Houston Beat To Get To The Final Four

Houston is in the Final Four. Plain and simple. It's a factually correct statement. You know what I've seen since the game ended? Shit, let me be more specific. You know what I've seen since before their Sweet 16 game? That Houston had too easy of a path to the Final Four. I'm not going to link the 1,000 tweets I saw of it because you know why? It doesn't matter. Houston won 4 games. Illinois should have won more. West Virginia should have won more. Oklahoma State should have won more. Tennessee should have shown up. That's the problem. Houston can't control who they play. You get put into a bracket and you attempt to win 6 in a row. It's not like Houston scheduled the region. It's not like Houston prevented Ayo from attacking Loyola. 

I fully get this is what we're going to do though. I fully get that's especially true with Houston, a team from a down AAC and didn't really have a great resume. Their metrics stuck out, but this wasn't a standard 2 seed resume. But watch them play. Watch that defense. That defense is fucking disgusting. They know how to double the post even if they don't have to because they do it for turnovers. They use the baseline as a 3rd defender, send help and rotate so the only pass out of there is a first swing opposite. Not the easiest for a big man to make. They have a guy in DeJon Jarreau who goes and gets 10/8/7 all while chasing around and defending Ethan Thompson. Game after game he draws the toughest assignment defensively. Game after game he's the best defender on the court. 

Yeah, they get complacent and stagnant on offense at times. We saw that against the Syracuse zone and against the Oregon State zone. Shit, they let Oregon State come all the way back and tie it up after being up 17 at halftime. 

What Houston does is offensive rebound and defend. They are a top-5 offensive rebounding team in the country and there's a reason for it. They are a top-5 defense in the country and there's a reason for it. Also just a hell of a story for Kelvin Sampson. The man got hit with arguably the most ridiculous penalty simply for calling recruits too much. He had to go be an NBA assistant and work his way back. Stories like this were written about him when Houston hired him: 

Now he's taking Houston back to the Final Four for the first time since Hakeem went by Akeem and Clyde Drexler and Phi Slama Jama. He's turned Houston into one of the most consistent programs in the country. 3 straight Sweet 16 trips and a Final Four to go with it. And you know what? It doesn't fucking matter who they beat. They won. That's all that matters in March. If you want to be mad at someone that Houston had the path, be mad at Illinois, Oklahoma State and West Virginia.