CKS Radio Show - 12 March 2018

pray10 · March 13, 2018, 4:22pm

Link (Need a subscription): http://www.uhcougars.com/collegesportslive/?media=564832

Haven’t had a chance to listen and the twitter account didn’t put anything out about what was said. I’ll do a recap later.

jeepins · March 13, 2018, 5:27pm

Haven’t seen the abbreviation CKS much since… well you know. Had me going “say what?”

pray10 · March 14, 2018, 4:39pm

Recap:

Was really worried about UCF on a couple of levels: 1) 2nd straight year having to play host team and 2) the promise he made to Jim Nantz
Never feels pressure in games, but did feel pressure for UCF game because of that Nantz promise. Only told his wife, Karen, prior to the game
Got back to hotel after midnight after UCF game. Ate meal, sent players to bed, Coach White had the WSU scouting report and coaches went over the game film.
Less than one day to prep, don’t overcomplicate gameplan, go with what works and simplify.
WSU was a good matchup for us.
Always have a game like the first game at WSU or the games like we had against ECU and Tulsa where one team goes crazy…just throw those games out
Knew the game was going to come down to last few seconds. Come down to their scoring vs our rebounding and defense against Shamet
Gray made an incredible pay on the out of bounds play. Knew the play they were going to run (credit to Coach White) and took away their first two options. Credit to Gray for reading the pass
Talks about the clock stopping with 9 seconds. Says it wasn’t fair to WSU because of the clock change and not giving time after the timeout when they made the clock change.
Feather in our cap for beating a preseason top 10 team twice
Prepping for Cincy, not a hard team to plan for, they’re just really good
First timeout after the Cincy 11-2 run, told the team that the game started at 3:30, any chance they were going to show up.
Cincy is so good in the half court. A lot of the stuff we run against other teams, we struggle against Cincy because of their length on the wings
Hard to get ball inside against them…reason they’re a #2 seed and have a good chance at getting to the Final Four
We’re pretty good at defense…even though we struggled in the 2nd half offensively, we were up by 2 at half and only lost 1 so Cincy struggled to
Talks about Washington’s shot that tied it at 55 in the last minute. Said Zanna had a great close out, kid just made a great shot. He doesn’t make it, Houston is probably cutting down the nets
On last shot from Rob, he didn’t like the play that was drawn up, and shot his shot. Not going to get mad at Rob, if he thinks he can make it, he doesn’t mind him shooting it.
Wasn’t thrilled with the last foul call on Zanna; would prefer that the players decide it
Having to go full court at the end hurts (prefers the NBA rule about moving it to half court). Rob saw something he didn’t like and changed the play. Not going to get upset
Half the players were crying after the loss; felt like a little league coach. Understood…if you’re invested, you should cry.
Told Rob, take those two play, tie them up in a bag, and throw them in the Brazos River. If it wasn’t for Rob Gray, we wouldn’t be where we are.
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Thought it would have been a 5 bid league if SMU and UCF had stayed healthy
Really good basketball conference. To go 14-4 and tie for 2nd is a great year for the Cougars
Never lost two in a row this year; always bounced back
Getting kids to play hard, scrap, claw, fight…that’s how we practice and teach the kids all the time
Hold kids accountable for their effort and how hard they play. Define that as most kids don’t know how to play.
4 kids coming in have no clue what they’re getting into. Can say it because all of them are signed.
Depends on the kid on how fast they get it
Banters with a fan (John) about him being there every week and asks him about what he eats at Fuddruckers.
14th NCAA tourney for Kelvin. Had some teams go one-and-done and others that went to the Final Four
Assistant coach that he trusts the most will scout for the first game (SDSU). The other assistants will be assigned to the potential 2nd round matchups
Talks about one year at Montana when he says he had a good team, but they were beat up and snuck in as a 13 seed facing Arizona in the first round. Bad match-up for Arizona. Thought they’d play Lamar Odom’s Rhode Island team, but they lost to UNC-Charlotte and then Montana beat UNC-Charlotte. Never know in this tourney.
So much parity after the top few seeds, seedings don’t really matter.
SDSU lost 7 in a row when their best player was out. Tough match-up for anybody.
1 vs 16 is the only time that a lower seed winning would be an upset. All the others aren’t upsets, just numbers next to names
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Devin Davis is next
Season is now 0-0, nothing before this matters
Amazing to see Houston in the NCAA tournament and see our name on the TV Screen
Just ready to play on the big stage and compete and represent UH
Main reason he committed to UH was because of the family environment. Coach Sampson teaches things every day that aren’t just for the basketball court. Play like a family on the court.
Just a blessing to be able to play basketball, blessing to have Coach Sampson as the coach.
Being able to bring a banner to UH for the tourney appearance means everything. Just want to keep carrying on and keep winning
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Back to Coach Sampson
Jokes that he’ll let Jeremy know when he sees how he plays defense Thursday
One of his favorite people that he’s met is Devin’s mom who’s very intelligent and witty
When they were recruiting Devin, his mother came with him. Usually, the recruiting trip is scripted. Had them meet with AD Yurachek to talk about the administration, facilities, etc. When they came back over, start listening to Devin’s mom (Tiffany) and she made a lot of sense and talking from her heart about what Devin needed. Said he needed to hush the crowd which really resonated. Looked at Devin, who was sitting on the couch, and told him that it’s time to hush the crowd. 90 seconds later, Devin says he’s ready to commit to UH and coach responded “Let’s go hush that crowd.”
Don’t get Devin Davis without the effort that Kellen put in
Banters with a fan (Josie) who says she’s going up to Wichita.
Team doesn’t have their legs back yet. Was hoping for a Friday bracket. If a Friday bracket, would have given team two days off from court work
Usually have a plan that if you play a certain number of minutes, you don’t have to do certain work with Coach Bishop.
But, that’s why we have the Development facility, Coach Bishop, and we have a great Hydrotherapy area in the facility. They do a great job with recovery.
Walked down from the training room and half the team was in the cold tub. Transition between cold and hot tub. Never see them go from hot tub to cold tub
Never gets old seeing the team he coaches on the selection show.
Wanted to see kid’s faces, especially Van Beck’s, Galen’s, and Rob’s. Wanted to see the kids who bought in when there were no facilities and just bought in to the promise of winning.
Kid’s went from bawling to pure excitement; enough for him to see that excitement.
If you’re going to be good at anything, you have to have two feet in.
Tells the pig and chicken story and banters with the fan (John) again. Two animals involved in the meal, one was involved (Chicken) and one was committed (pigs). Not interested in coaching chickens.
If he tells Devin to run through the wall, Devin will ask if he can get a running start.
Says that o his first team at Houston, if he had asked them to run through a wall, some of them would have negotiated.
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Talks about how hard it is to get to the NCAA tournament. Made it 11 of 12 years at OU and the one team that didn’t was ranked in the top 10 before the season, but suffered injuries.
Talks about the teams that were snubbed and the big names that missed out
Really comfortable with how the team is set up for the future and we should be here for awhile
Talks about who he could start next year (before the 4 coming in): Galen, Corey, Armoni, Fabian, Breaon and have Alley and Harris for depth
That first year set us back a year. 2nd year, 22 wins was amazing as it was early.
Doesn’t upset him that folks picked the team to finish so low. You can’t pick what you don’t know
Need kids in the program to take a big leap next year. Thinks Chris Harris is someone with that potential. Sometimes he’s the best player in practice, but he’s too inconsistent to give big minutes in games.
Excited to see what Harris does with Coach Bishop in the offseason. Excited to see Fabian and Armoni as well.
Praises the video coordinator. When he got on the plane coming back from Orlando, the last SDSU game (MWC tourney) was on his computer already so that he could watch it on the ride back.
By the time they landed, he had a good feel for the personnel on SDSU. Goes on to list their players and their roles off the top of his head.
The more he watched SDSU, the sicker he got because they’re long.
But what do you expect when you make the NCAA Tourney. All those teams are good. Numbers don’t matter, everyone is good.
Good feeling about his Coogs
Go Coogs!