SAN ANTONIO — Houston’s suffocating defense wiped away a 14-point deficit over the final eight minutes and erased Cooper Flagg and Duke’s title hopes Saturday in a 70-67 stunner over the Blue Devils at the Final Four.

Duke made a grand total of one field goal over the last 10 1/2 minutes of this game. The second-to-last attempt was a step-back jumper in the lane by Flagg that J’Wan Roberts disrupted. The last was a desperation heave by Tyrese Proctor that caught nothing at the buzzer.

It was Roberts’ two free throws with 19.6 seconds left that gave the Cougars their first lead since 6-5. LJ Cryer, who led Houston with 26 points, made two more to push the lead to three. It was Houston’s biggest lead of the night.

“No one ever loses at anything as long as you don’t quit,” coach Kelvin Sampson said. “If you quit, you’ve lost.”

The Cougars (35-4), who have never won a title, not even in the days of Phi Slama Jamma, will play Florida on Monday night for the championship.

Florida’s 79-73 win over Auburn in the early game was a free-flowing hoopsfest. This one would’ve looked perfect on a cracked blacktop and a court with chain-link nets.

That’s just how Houston likes it. The Cougars closed the game on an 11-1 run, and though Flagg finished with 27 points, he did it on 8-for-19 shooting and never got a good look after his 3-pointer with 3:02 left put the Blue Devils (35-4) up by nine.

It looked over at that point. Houston, though, was just getting started.

A team that prides itself on getting three stops in a row — calling the third one the “kill stop” — allowed a measly three free throws down the stretch, one of which came when Joseph Tugler got a technical for batting the ball from a Duke player’s hand as he was trying to throw an inbounds pass.

Houston finished with six blocked shots, including four from Tugler, who might be the best shot blocker this program has seen since Hakeem Olajuwon, who was on hand at the Alamodome to see the program’s first trip to the final since 1984.

Flagg, the freshman star from Newport, scored 19 points in the second half and finished with seven rebounds, four assists, three blocked shots and two steals. But fellow freshman Kon Knueppel (16 points) was the only other Blue Devil in double figures.