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Men’s March Madness has reached its final destination of the Alamodome in San Antonio where the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four will take place on Saturday, April 5, with the national championship happening on Monday, April 7. The first Final Four game will see the Florida Gators facing the Auburn Tigers for the second time this season at 6:09 p.m.
EDT. The second game features the Duke Blue Devils going against the Houston Cougars , and it is scheduled to start around 8:40 p.m.
EDT. Fans looking to attend the tournament can still find plenty of tickets available on StubHub , SeatGeek and VividSeats* . *New customers who purchase tickets through VividSeats can get $20 off a $200+ ticket order by using the promo code MassLive20 at checkout.
* If you need to travel outside your local area to get to this game, head over to TripAdvisor , VRBO , Marriott or Booking.com for deals on everything from car rentals to airfare to hotels. Tickets can be purchased for both Final Four games as a package, the national championship game, or all three games as a package.
The first Final Four contest sees a couple of the SEC’s best teams from this season in the Auburn Tigers and Florida Gators. The first meeting went Florida’s way as the Gators went on the road and earned a 90-81 victory. Duke and Houston did not face this season, but last season they faced off in the Sweet 16.
Houston was a 1 seed in the South Region and Duke was the 4 seed the pulled off a 54-51 upset. This time around, both are 1 seeds, and even more than a trip to the Elite Eight is up for grabs as the winner is headed to the national championship on Monday, April 7. What: 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four When : Saturday, April 5 at 6:09 p.
m. EDT and Monday, April 7 at 8:50 p.m.
EDT Where : Alamodome in San Antonio Tickets: StubHub ; SeatGeek ; VividSeats More sports, gear and tickets RELATED CONTENT: Houston defense thrives on bringing out the ugly during latest March Madness run By MICHAEL MAROT AP Sports Writer INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Houston Cougars like mixing it up. They enjoy seeing opponents colliding, sprawled across the floor. They thrive on rebounding and have used the relentlessly hard-nosed defense that has become their trademark during coach Kelvin Sampson’s 11-year career to take them places once considered unthinkable.
It’s why they’re now considered one of the country’s most successful, consistent teams annually — and why they’re one of four teams still playing Saturday in March Madness. “That’s what we do,” Midwest Region Most Outstanding Player Emanuel Sharp said after Sunday’s 69-50 win over Tennessee. “We’re a great defensive team and that’s how we like to set the tone of the game, on the defensive end.
I think when we come out with the right intensity, we’re a hard team to beat.” The Cougars (34-4) certainly haven’t lost much this season. Their 17-game winning streak is the longest in Division I, they swept the Big 12 regular season and conference tournament titles and now they’ve reached the Final Four for the first time since losing to 2021 national champion Baylor in a March Madness that will always be remembered as the tournament played in the Indiana COVID-19 bubble.
That loss came in a national semifinal, where the Cougars are 2-4 all-time. They’ll face five-time national champion Duke in San Antonio, a 3 1/2-hour drive from their campus, as they try to reach their first title game since back-to-back runner-up finishes in 1983 and 1984. “We didn’t get good the last 36 hours,” Sampson said when asked about Houston’s quick turnaround between the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
“We just went through the Big 12 Tournament, played three games there. The thing I like about this team, I don’t think they overreact to anything, good or bad. Kind of keep an even keel.
” Perhaps that explains why the Cougars didn’t even flinch after the 62-60 late-night, last-second win over Purdue in the Sweet 16 and facing the Vols in the Elite Eight. How stingy have the Cougars been? After allowing a Division I low 58.3 points during the regular season, Houston has allowed just 56.
5 points in four NCAA Tournament games while allowing just one team, Gonzaga, to top 60 points. They also allowed the lowest scoring totals last weekend — twice. Tennessee missed its first 14 3-pointers, shot a dismal 28.
8% from the field and despite playing well defensively against Kentucky simply couldn’t match the Cougars toughness. “They do what they do,” deflated Vols coach Rick Barnes said in his opening statement after the loss. “That’s why they’re where they are, that’s the standard of their program.
” Yet in a college basketball era where faster, higher-scoring games seem to be all the rage, this Final Four seems to be all about the defense. Duke swarmed Alabama’s 3-point shooters, holding the Crimson Tide nearly 40 points below their previous game’s scoring total to win the East Region title. Florida’s defense spurred a late run to get past Texas Tech in the West Region and South Region champ Auburn is allowing just 65 points per game in the tourney.
But nobody has done it better than Houston, and that’s by design. Sharp, who is 6-foot-3, 210 pounds, and LJ Cryer, at 6-1, 200, may not look like the most imposing backcourt but they revel in getting physical. Plus, Cryer comes with a championship pedigree, part of Baylor’s title team.
Houston forwards Ja’Vier Francis, J’Wan Roberts and Joseph Tugler stand 6-8, not nearly as big as some of the other frontline beasts in San Antonio, but they are experienced, tough and muscle bound. The inside-out defensive combination has made Houston almost unbeatable. Since starting the season at 3-4, they’ve gone 30-1 and broken the school’s single-season victory record.
“We’re able to do some things that may be outside the box, whether it’s spending extra time on baseline out of bounds plays, we spend a lot of time on that, offensively and defensively,” Sampson said. “We take pride on not being scored on in baseline out of bounds. If you watch (Tennessee) when they beat Auburn or beat Alabama, they played a certain way.
But we play the way we play and our kids are very confident in our approach and our defense.” And now Sampson will find out if that defense is good enough to carry him to his first championship game in three Final Four trips — or bring Houston its elusive first title. The Associated Press contributed to this article.
