SAN ANTONIO — Forty-six minutes from the moment the buzzer sounded on men’s college basketball’s tightest-knit family, the big red door that separated the Houston Cougars from the outside world finally opened.
Inside, a locker room that had been shoulder-to-shoulder throughout the week all the sudden felt empty. A few players lingered, most with towels over their heads. The senior class, one that had stuck it out together to “run it back” one last time and keep swinging at that elusive crown, had largely vanished, likely into the privacy of the bathrooms from which expletives and tears echoed off the walls.
