The Boilermakers found themselves down 10, and started to come back. They had made it a 2 point game with a little over 4 minutes when Houston missed a shot and in the fight for the rebound, a Cougar goes right over Caleb Furst to knock the ball out. It should have been an over-the-back penalty but it was called out on Furst. To rub salt in the wound, the replay showed that the ball actually last touched the knee of the Houston player but it wasn’t reviewable. And then LJ Cryer made a three-pointer off the new possession to extend the lead to 5.

Still, the Boilers had life in them. Braden Smith made a pretty pass to Trey Kaufman-Renn for a dunk to cut the lead to 3 with 2:20 to play. Then, the teams managed to stop each other multiple times. With under a minute to play, Houston was pushing Purdue all the way to half court, and so with the shot clock winding down, Smith desperately drives into the lane and kicks the ball out to the corner where Camden Heide hits a 3 pointer to tie the game.

With 34 seconds left, Houston decides to hold the ball as long as possible. Milos Uzan drives to the lane, and completely shoves Braden Smith out of the way to create space to shoot the ball with 5 seconds left, he misses his shot and as it looks like Camden Heide is in position for the rebound, Joseph Tugler jumps into him, the ball goes off Heide’s hand out-of-bounds, and it is Houston’s ball.

As they review who the ball goes off, the announcers are commenting on how it wasn’t an offensive foul on Uzan but since that is not reviewable, the ball is clearly off Heide.

And so 2.8 seconds left, and Milos Uzan passes the ball into the lane to Joseph Tugler, who immediately passes the ball back into Uzan who has just taken a step onto the court. And the Lunatic screams “NOOOOOO!!!!!!” as Uzan goes up for the layup to win the game for the Houston Cougars.

It is a shame because Purdue fought so hard in this game. And fought is the appropriate word as the Houston players ran them over time and time again as they crashed the offensive boards without any fouls against them. With all the contact that happened in the game, Houston only had 5 fouls called on them the entire second half.

At the end of the day, Houston had 16 offensive rebounds that typically led to points – and it was the final crashing of the boards (and the ridiculous non-call on the offensive foul on the drive) that led to them getting the ball out with 2.8 seconds to end Purdue’s season. It was a brutal way to finish the year, but I have to say that I was proud of how they played – they played their hearts out and ended up 1 second short.

So, all 8 favorites won in the Sweet 16. In 3 of the regions, we will see the #1 seed play the #2 seed. And in the one region where the #2 seed was eliminated, the #3 seed took its place.

While I am sad for my Boilers, you have to admit that it should be a great Elite 8. We have

• The SEC regular season champion
• The SEC tournament champion
• The Big 10 regular season champion
• The ACC regular season / tournament champion
• The Big 12 regular season / tournament champion
• The Big 12 second place team
• The other two SEC tournament semi-finalists who have been in the top 5-10 teams in the polls for most of the season.