INDIANAPOLIS — The defining theme of the 2024-25 college basketball season has revolved around the dominance of the SEC. The league set a record with 14 NCAA tournament bids, set another record with seven teams in the Sweet 16 and became the first conference to have four teams in each regional final.

But on Sunday in the Elite Eight, the University of Houston showed Tennessee and the SEC that the Big 12 can still play the role of bully. Houston threw a defensive haymaker in the first half and rendered Tennessee’s offense overwhelmed and impotent, like so many victims of the SEC this year in a 69-50 win.

In a tournament where SEC teams won often by swallowing teams whole with athleticism, depth and an abundance of talent, Houston flipped the script.

Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars have been the Big 12’s most dominant program since entering the league two years ago. And they’ve done so with a defensive edge that Sampson began forging in teams back at Montana Tech when he first became a head coach in the early 1980s.

On Sunday, Sampson’s old friend Rick Barnes became the latest team to get ripped apart by the Houston buzzsaw. Tennessee missed its first 14 3-pointers, trailed by as many as 22 in the first half and looked at times like a directional school buy game opponent in an early November match-up.

L.J. Cryer shook off a rough shooting performance against Purdue to score a team-high 17 points, and Houston dominated the paint by outscoring Tennessee 30 to 14 inside. Tennessee finished the game shooting 17.2-percent from 3-point range and 28.8-percent from the field. Tennessee managed to cut the Houston lead to 10 in the second half.

Any embers of life Tennessee showed the second half were extinguished by Emanuel Sharp, who hit a pair of second-half three pointers and finished with 16 points to make sure that Tennessee failed to cut the lead to single-digits.

The Cougars improved to 34-4 and will face East Regional champion No. 1 Duke in the Final Four next week. It’s the program’s seventh Final Four, and its six appearances in the event without a national title is the most of any program in college basketball.

Sampson advances to the third Final Four of his career, and the second during his time at Houston. After advancing on a slick in-bounds play with less than a second left against Purdue on Friday night, Houston’s beautiful defensive brutality eliminated any chance at similar drama on Sunday.

The Final Four will be another showcase for the remarkable run of dominance that Sampson has conducted at Houston. The Cougars own the country’s longest run of Sweet 16s, having reached the round six-straight years.

By winning, Sampson prevented his close friend Barnes from reaching his second Final Four. It also prevented Tennessee from reaching the first Final Four in school history. This is Tennessee’s 10th Sweet 16, the most by any school to never make a Final Four.

The SEC already has Florida advanced to the Final Four and will have a chance to have a second team with No. 1 Auburn playing No. 2 Michigan State in the South Regional Final later today. The loss means the SEC will not tie the Big East’s record of three teams in the Final Four back in 1985.

No. 1 Houston is the third top seed to reach the Final Four. If Auburn joins them it’d be the first Final Four with all four No. 1 seeds since 2008, the only other time all four No. 1s advanced.

Tennessee belly flopped from the start. Houston forced misses on 10 of Tennessee’s first 11 shots and no makes on the Vols first 14 3-pointers. By the time Zakai Zeigler hit Tennessee’s first 3-pointer, there were 39 seconds left in the half and it cut the Cougar lead to 34-15.

The Vols were never really in the game. Tennessee fell behind 9-2 to open the game, 22-6 at one point in the first half and took more than 16 minutes to crack double-digits. By then, the Vols trailed 29-10 and Barnes had his hands jammed in his pockets in frustration.

The Tennessee offensive ineptitude – and Houston’s defensive disruption – had the NCAA interns getting paper cuts looking up historic lows in a tournament game.

It was the worst first half for a team seeded No. 1 or No. 2 in NCAA history, as the 15 points were the lowest of any Top 2 seed. It’s the second worst overall scoring half for a Top 2 seed, with Kentucky’s 11 points against Georgetown in the national semis in 1984 the only worse performance.