Chasing NCAA tournament history, this title run means a bit more for Houston's LJ Cryer

SAN ANTONIO — Only one night after Baylor swatted aside previously undefeated Gonzaga to capture its first national title four years ago, freshman LJ Cryer was right back in the gym getting up shots and working on his game.

He couldn’t bear another season as a fringe rotation player who logged a few scant minutes one night and didn’t leave the bench the next.

Cryer arrived at Baylor at a time when the Bears were teeming with top-tier backcourt talent. Jared Butler, Davion Mitchell, MaCio Teague and Adam Flagler were the four leading scorers on a team that lost only two games all season and never allowed a single NCAA tournament opponent to finish within nine points.

Arriving as a highly touted recruit and scarcely playing “really messes with your mental [health],” Cryer admitted Sunday. He recalled times when he cried in Baylor coach Scott Drew’s office, workouts where it was hard to motivate himself to keep giving his all. To this day, he wishes he’d been given the option to redshirt so that he’d have known ahead of time the DNPs were coming.

“It definitely fueled me,” Cryer said. “That whole summer, I was working out two or three times a day, taking a lot of extra shots. I was happy we won the national championship, but I wanted to contribute to my own national championship in a way.”

L.J. Cryer and the Houston Cougars had plenty reason to celebrate after knocking off Duke in the Final Four on Saturday. (Lance King/Getty Images)

(Lance King via Getty Images)

Four years after that humbling experience, Cryer is back in the national title game with a chance to make history. The Houston guard would become the first men’s or women’s Division I college basketball player ever to win championships with two different programs if the Cougars can beat fellow No. 1 seed Florida on Monday night in San Antonio.

Whereas Cryer didn’t check into the 2021 title game until the outcome had long been decided, he’ll play an entirely different role Monday night against Florida. Cryer is Houston’s leading scorer and most feared perimeter shooter, the guy who opposing coaches game plan to keep from beating them.

Cryer is averaging 15.6 points per game. His elite 42.7% shooting from behind the arc is slightly higher than he shoots from inside it. The fifth-year senior piled up 26 points against long, athletic Duke on Saturday night, keeping Houston within striking distance until its top-ranked defense at last imposed its will and fueled a stunning comeback from a 14-point deficit.

“Our best player, the guy that kept us in the game, was L.J.,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “He kept us in touch with them. So when the time came, we had an opportunity to get the lead down where we could put some game pressure on them.”

How did Cryer go from a healthy scratch in 10 games as a Baylor freshman to knocking down six 3s against Duke in the national semifinals? The work ethic instilled in him since boyhood is a big part of it.

When Cryer was growing up in Katy, Texas, he remembers his cousin Sam Carter staying with his family. Carter, who went on to play safety at TCU, would leave the house at 5 a.m. most mornings to go do strength and conditioning work. Sometimes, he would take Cryer with him.

“When he went off to college, I started doing it on my own with my dad,” Cryer said. “When I got to high school, I used to shoot at 6 a.m. before school was open.”

Cryer was, as Sampson puts it, “a bucket getter in high school.” The 6-foot-1 guard was known as a three-level scorer and finished his high school career with 3,488 points, the most of any Houston-area public school player.

It took longer than Cryer wanted, but he eventually showcased his scoring prowess in a Baylor jersey. He averaged 13.5 points per game during an injury-plagued sophomore season. He upped that to 15 per game during a breakout junior campaign.

When Cryer entered the transfer portal in 2023, he explained to 247Sports that he was “looking for a fresh start.” He added that his time at Baylor featured “a lot of ups and downs” and that he was looking for a program that wanted him to play “both guard positions” instead of primarily as a scoring guard.

Sampson made Cryer no such promises when recruiting him two years ago. Like Drew, Sampson envisioned Cryer as more of a scorer than a playmaker.

“He told me he was going to hold me accountable every single day, especially my defense,” Cryer said Sunday. “He said I was a terrible defender, but he was going to change that. He said, ‘We’re going to get you in good shape and you’re going to be a helluva player if you play for me.’ I trusted him.”

The addition of Cryer injected needed offensive punch into a Houston program known for its relentless defense and rebounding. He might have helped the Cougars reach last year’s Final Four were it not for ill-timed injuries to forward JoJo Tugler and point guard Jamal Shead.

This year, he has led Houston to within a single victory of Sampson’s first national championship despite an obstacle-laden path. The Cougars had to overcome a second-round matchup against a Gonzaga team ranked in the top 10 in most predictive metrics. Then came virtual road games against Purdue and Tennessee in Indianapolis. Now Houston will have to topple two fellow No. 1 seeds here in San Antonio.

Florida head coach Todd Golden is very aware of the challenge that Cryer and fellow Houston guards Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp represent. Golden spoke repeatedly on Sunday about the importance of limiting their open 3-point attempts.

“Big-picture goal is going to be to make them take tough twos and then to fight like hell to get the rebound,” Golden said. “Every rebound we get is going to feel like we won the game, I feel like.”

What would it mean to Cryer to win a second national championship on Monday night? He admits the second one would be even more meaningful than the first. The first time, Cryer was the fifth guard on a team that often only played four. This time, it will be hard for Houston to take him off the court.

“It definitely would be cool to make history at two different schools,” Cryer said. “If I could have done it at one school, I’d have preferably done it that way but my journey is my journey.”

Now a fifth-year senior, Cryer sees a lot of himself in some of Houston’s fringe rotation players, the young guys who might not play Monday night just like Cryer himself didn’t four years ago. Cryer has a message for them that he shares often.

“Be patient,” he says. “It’s all going to work out.”

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Chasing NCAA tournament history, this title run means a bit more for Houston’s LJ Cryer

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