Villanova forward Jermaine Samuels celebrates after a win against Houston in the South Region final Saturday in San Antonio. David J. Phillip/Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO — Villanova Coach Jay Wright has won national championships with well-balanced and fundamentally sound teams, yet even he knew staying in contention for another title was going to take a rugged and exhaustive effort.

Ugly at times, the final result was beautiful for the Wildcats, who are going to their third Final Four in the past six NCAA Tournaments.

Jermaine Samuels had 16 points and 10 rebounds as Villanova grinded out a 50-44 victory over gritty and athletic Houston in the South Region final Saturday.

“You just knew watching this team defensively, like you weren’t going to come out and just outscore them,” Wright said. “We really weren’t talking as much at the end about how we were going to score. We were talking about how we were going to stop them.”

Caleb Daniels added 14 points for the Wildcats (30-7), and fifth-year senior Collin Gillespie’s only made field goal was a clutch shot late, even though Villanova led throughout to clinch the first spot in this year’s Final Four in New Orleans.

“It was like playing against our own selves. They were just as physical as we were,” Daniels said. “It was a literal street fight, every possession trying to get a rebound.”

Villanova shot 28.8% from the field (15 of 52). The Cougars were only slightly better at 29.8% (17 of 57), missing their last five shots and 10 of 11 overall after cutting an 11-point deficit to two. They made only one of their of 20 attempted 3-pointers in their lowest-scoring NCAA tourney game ever.

“We had it turned, we kept getting stops. We were getting stop, stop stop, we just weren’t scoring on the other end,” Houston Coach Kelvin Sampson said. “I remember telling them in the huddle, I think it was a four-point game there … and we kept getting stops that somebody’s going to make a big shot. But we didn’t. Credit Villanova.”

The Wildcats, seeing their fourth championship overall, will play either Kansas, the only No. 1 seed remaining, or 10th-seeded Miami in a national semifinal next Saturday. They have won two championships in Wright’s 22 seasons, in 2016 and 2018.

“We couldn’t get Justin (Moore) or Collin in ball screens. They just took it away. We couldn’t get Justin and Collin in post-ups. They took it away. It was hard to even get them backdoor cuts,” Wright said. “They took away our two leading scorers, and other guys had to step up.”

Taze Moore had 15 points and 10 rebounds for the Cougars (32-6), who were denied making consecutive Final Four appearances for the first time since 1982-84 during the Phil Slama Jama era. The starting five was completely changed from last season, including Moore and two other senior newcomers.

After Villanova missed three shots on the same possession – and was still without any second-chance points in the game – Moore got the long rebound on the break. After initially slowing things down, he scored on a drive against Gillespie, getting Houston within 42-40 with 5:25 left.

It was the closest the Cougars had been in the game at AT&T Center, only about 200 miles from their campus, and the crowd was in a loud frenzy when Wright called timeout.

But Houston never got a chance to take the lead.

Gillespie, who played in the championship game for the Wildcats in 2018, was 1 of 6 shooting. But his only field goal came on the possession after the timeout when he waved off Samuels, stepped inside the 3-point line and hit a jumper with 5:02 left.

“It was an in-the-moment decision. They were soft-blitzing me basically the whole game. That time they just happened to switch,” Gillespie said. “So I wanted Jermaine to go down into the post. I had a mismatch … then Jermaine had a guard on him so he could rebound.”

There was a nearly two-minute scoring drought before Justin Moore made two free throws, with a foul by J’Wan Roberts bailing out the Wildcats with the shot clock about to run out. Those were their only second-chance points in the entire game.

Samuels was also on that 2018 title team as a freshman with Gillespie, but the 6-foot-7 forward logged only one minute total while making late-game appearances in those two Final Four games.

As a senior, Samuels goes into the Final Four as the MVP of the South Region. He is averaging 17.5 points a game in this NCAA tourney.

INJURY

Villanova’s Moore suffered a lower leg injury when he slipped while dribbling in the final minute. He was on crutches during the Wildcats’ postgame celebration.

BIG PICTURE

Houston: The Cougars had advanced to the Final Four all previous six times they had played in a regional final: 1967, 1968, 1982, 1983, 1984 and 2021. … Fifth-year forward Fabian White Jr., who started only a handful of games before this season, played in his school-record 148th game and was part of a record 120 victories.

Villanova: This is the fourth time in a row that Villanova won when getting to a regional final, following 2009, 2016 and 2018. The Wildcats are 20-3 in NCAA tourney games since 2016. … They are 9-0 in March, their largest winning streak this season, and have won 14 of 15 since the first week of February.