University of Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson is always coaching.
He’s coaching on the floor, in practice, in meeting rooms, and even in postgame press conferences. So, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when, after the 73-66 home loss to the University of Arizona that Sampson said something with Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp seated next to him that you almost never hear a coach say out loud.
“I’ve been coaching a long time. Losing has never bothered me that much because losing is a part of the journey,” Sampson said. “You are going to lose games. We win around here so much that sometimes we forget we can lose, too.”
What that was was a shake it off and get ready for the next one, not just to his players beside him and the others in the locker room down the hall, but to the Cougars’ fan base that exited the Fertitta Center a little bewildered after watching the team they believe is built to win it all stumble for the second straight game in conference where every game counts. Sure, this isn’t the time to lose if you want to be positioned right for the upcoming Big 12 and NCAA Tournaments.
But that’s what the Cougars did. They stumbled during an inopportune time against three teams – Iowa State, Arizona, Kansas – and they are locked into a dead heat finish for the Big 12 regular season title. With three games left after Monday night’s double-digit letdown at Kansas, there is not a lot of room for error.
But Sampson knows more heartbreak is possible, whether it’s against Kansas, or struggling Colorado, Baylor, or Oklahoma State. He’s not anticipating another letdown, but he wants everyone to be at their best to prevent it.
“Don’t overreact to your losses,” Sampson said after the loss at home to Arizona. “You are going to have losses. These may not be our last loss in conference. This conference is good. Going 19-1, 16-2, or 13-3; you don’t do that in this league, especially as good as it is this year.
“When teams play Arizona, Houston, or Texas Tech, or Iowa State, or Kansas when those teams play, two things are guaranteed. A really good team is going to win, and a really good team is going to lose.”
Make no mistake, UH is a really good team. But right now at this late stage of the season, some of the Cougars’ weaknesses are being exposed and exploited.
Against an Arizona team that the Cougars came into the matchup tied with for first place in the Big 12, they didn’t score enough in transition, their key shooters kept going cold at the worst times, and there was nobody in the paint they could just throw the ball in for a needed automatic basket.
Those are problems that can only get worse in next month’s win-or-go-home environment known as March Madness. Sure, supreme guard play is a must during the postseason, and the Cougars have three of the best in the nation in freshman Kingston Flemings and veterans Uzan and Sharp.
But they are going to need more consistency in scoring from the front-court players like Joseph Tugler and Kalifa Sakho, especially when the perimeter players go cold in critical moments down the stretch.
“All year long we haven’t thrown the ball inside,” said Sampson, whose team dropped three spots in this week’s poll to No.5. “We haven’t had somebody that we can throw the ball inside and attract the double team and be consistent with scoring. What we’ve been all year is a jump shot shooting team. And that’s okay. You can win a lot of games doing that. But at some point, you’ve got to get transition points. The last two games that has been our biggest bugaboo. We are having to play way too much in the half-court. Way too much.”
“Arizona is good. Iowa State is good. Not a lot of difference in any of the teams. We have a good team. We just didn’t play
Kelvin Sampson
good enough tonight to win.”
While the Cougars, 23-5 overall and 11-4 in league play, might have lost a step in the race to win the Big 12 regular season and to secure a No.1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd made the point that the Big 12 is so good this year that even its second or third-place teams are capable of still winning the national championship. That takes a little pressure off the Cougars.
“In the little adversity right now, I think it’s super important to stay together during these losses,” Uzan said. “We’ve got another one coming up, so we’ve got to get better and learn from it.”
Sampson wants his fans to stay in the game, too. He knows everyone has gotten comfortable with the idea of UH being a perennial basketball power like they were in the American Athletic Conference and have continued in the Big 12 as a Power 4 program.
“When you are winning 30-something games four or five years in a row. You are winning the conference championship in one conference, and you switch conferences, and you are still winning. You assume that it’s easy,” said Sampson, who has guided the program to a previously unheard of 11 straight 20-win seasons. “When you are playing for these stakes at this high level, and the other teams are just as good as you are, sometimes it comes down to little things.”
