What Kelvin Sampson said about Houston’s first-round NCAA foe, Milos Uzan, LJ Cryer
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Shortly after Houston held a team party to learn of its NCAA Tournament destination on Sunday, coach Kelvin Sampson was a guest on a podcast.
On the Cougar-centric podcast, called Talkin’ Bout Them Cougars!, Sampson talked about a variety of topics, from his familiarity with SIU Edwardsville, Houston’s first-round opponent on Thursday, and Cougar players like Milos Uzan and LJ Cryer.
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Here are highlights on what Sampson had to say on the podcast:
On facing SIU Edwardsville
(Houston is playing another team called the Cougars, as SIU Edwardsville makes its NCAA Tournament debut Thursday afternoon in Wichita, Kan.)
“I’m familiar with the coach (Brian Barone). … Brian and Kellen (Sampson, Houston assistant coach) has been good friends for a long time. When I was at Oklahoma, our first year in the Big 12, (Texas) A&M played all their games in this old arena called G. Rollie White (Coliseum), and their head coach was named Tony Barone, and then maybe that year, the next couple of years, their starting point guard was Brian Barone, who was tough as nails.
“But, I don’t know a lot about the team yet. … I’m going to watch some film a little bit (Sunday night), dig more into them (Monday), and then we’ll get ready to play.
“If I’m not mistaken, this is my 20th year taking a team to the tournament and I’ve approached every tournament the same. It’s a one-game season.”
What to know about SIU Edwardsville, Houston's first-round opponent at NCAA tourney
On if Sampson has any thoughts on the Georgia-Gonzaga matchup
(The Georgia-Gonzaga first-round winner Thursday takes on Houston, provided it wins its game Thursday, on Saturday in the second round.)
“I saw Georgia play a couple of times this year. I’ve seen Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s play, I’m not really familiar enough with any of those teams to have an opinion of them. In this business, we never look ahead; that’s for the experts and the pundits to do. Somebody asked me one time about my word about this game versus another game. I don’t know another game; only know the one we’re playing. Some people may like it, some people don’t. The ones that don’t, I just promise you, they’ll get over it.”
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On Houston’s early season struggles
(Houston started the season 4-3, with losses to Auburn, Alabama and San Diego State, the latter two during an event in Las Vegas.)
“Before we went to Vegas, we had a scrimmage with Ole Miss in Shreveport. The day before we left, Ja’Vier (Francis) had a serious groin injury, and he wound up missing 19 days of practice. … He wasn’t ready to play in the Auburn game, he wasn’t ready to play in Vegas. The other thing was, Milos (Uzan) broke his nose. Now, some people can break their nose and get it shoved back into place, but he had surgery, so he was out of practice 21 days.
“We beat Notre Dame, but trust me, we were terrible in that game, too, but our team was forming. … When I got pitched the opportunity to go to Vegas, it didn’t matter who we played, it was a million dollars, and we needed that now. We could have lost all three games, wouldn’t have mattered to me. November is November. It’s not February, it’s not March. A lot of years, we’ve been 13-0, 12-1, but we didn’t. The only reason I think we were 13-0 is because we didn’t play the number one team in the nation, the number three team in the nation and then I think San Diego State was ranked by then. … When you’re a coach, you don’t ever overreact to wins or losses in November.
“The game we played when we got back was Butler, and so I don’t think we spent a lot of time talking about losing a game. Our charge, our responsibility, was just to keep practicing; we needed to practice. The tough thing about Vegas, and I talked to (Oregon coach) Dana Altman and to Buzz (Williams, Texas A&M coach) about this, is we all left to go out there on a Monday. I think we played Tuesday, so you’re out there from Monday to Saturday and you don’t get to practice, we couldn’t fix our mistakes.
“I’ve said this to the media here many, many times, November basketball is November basketball. You’re wasting your time evaluating, it doesn’t matter. I mean really, it literally does not matter. Your team will have been formed by Christmas. Christmas break, I usually know what our team’s going to look like because obviously, I’m working with them every day and I can see their ceiling. I thought we had a high ceiling in November, but that ceiling had to wait. You don’t get to skip steps on the ladder, you have to hit every step. Some of those steps have landmines, may blow up. But I thought the Auburn game helped us, I thought the Alabama game helped us, I thought the San Diego State game helped us.”
On the development of Milos Uzan as a point guard
(In his first season at Houston after transferring from Oklahoma, and replacing the talented Jamal Shead, Uzan has been able to make the transition and come into his own. He had a career-high 25 points in Houston’s Big 12 Tournament title win last Saturday against Arizona.)
“When we recruited Milos last April, of course, I don’t look at stats. Stats tell no story. … You could tell Milos was going to be a good shooter, but the uneducated and the uninitiated looked at his stats and said he’s a bad shooter. Well, he’s not.
“He’s never a bad shooter; the Oklahoma team got put in a lot of late-clock situations and guess who had the ball at the end of the clock? In the NBA, those guys won’t shoot it, they pass to somebody else because they don’t want the stat.
“He just needed to raise confidence and reps and that’s where Coach Q (assistant coach Quannas White, who is leaving Houston after the season to become coach at Louisiana) was the best in the business at, so we thought he could be a 40% 3-point shooter here. We thought he was a guard that needed to be more competitive, and he probably needed a stubborn old coach to get the best out of him, too. Being good is hard, it’s really hard to be built. Coming into work every day, there is no off days and you know, that’s attitude; your attitude has to be right.
“So when we left Vegas, I think he wore that mask right up until we left and he took the mask off. Remember, he had surgery, so he was still feeling the effects of the surgery, he was a little bit tentative in the crowds. He didn’t want to do this, do that, so we had to be patient with him. But you know, LJ (Cryer) and Emanuel (Sharp), Ja’Vier, J’Wan (Roberts), JoJo (Joseph Tugler), those guys were so dependent on the way we played with Jamal, so that wasn’t easy for him. … Milos didn’t have anybody to hand it to him. He didn’t have a chance to have a smooth transition. So inside the bunker, we kind of knew where we were headed.
“So once we got to the Big 12, he really played good in Stillwater, and then he had a couple of bumpy games and then he started to catch his groove about mid to late January and by the time we got to February, he was on the right path. But he couldn’t play in February the way he played in November. … The biggest thing was just his aggressiveness, he was not used to playing aggressive.
“But all the credit goes to Milos; unbelievable kid. He’s learned how to compete, changed his life and he’ll play basketball and make a living at it for a long, long time.”
On depending on graduate guard LJ Cryer with his previous NCAA Tournament experience
(Cryer played on the 2021 Baylor team that defeated Houston in the Final Four and went on to win the national title.)
“He chose us, remember, he chose us. We chose him, but he chose us. He played against us, so he sat down and watched film.
“You know, this isn’t the 1970s where you’re not on TV; every game we play is on national TV, whether it’s ESPN Plus or CBS or ESPN, you can watch us play every night. We’ve been a one seed now for three years, where we’ve been ranked in the top 25 longer than any basketball program in America. That’s how long we’ve been good. So he knew what he was getting into but he chose that.
“He knew what I was like as a coach. He chose that, too. He knew what his teammates were going to be like, and he chose that, too. So let’s give him some credit. It’s easy to go somewhere where maybe the demands aren’t as demanding, where the expectations may not be as high, where every day is going to be a challenge.”
