Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.
I thought the same as well, I was shocked at how good he was playing on defense. It just didn’t last as I am sure he was getting tired as he never plays that any minutes or has to defend a big like that all game. I’m not sure who else we could have put in, Chicken would have been broken in two by that beast. The only thing I didn’t like late was they were just letting him post up and made it too easy. They should have fronted him or something. At least force Akron to run a play to get him the ball. The one thing that could have helped having Chicken in there was making Johnson work harder on defense and cover more ground.
Overall I am very skeptical of next season. I have a hard time seeing the team being better.
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Let’s give their big credit for making his own adjustments, as well as their coach. And yes, the refs seemed very generous in letting him shove and elbow his way around. But we lost this game, as well as most of our losses, because we don’t have a true big man of our own. Its that simple. We can’t control the paint. Best we can do is have our smaller guys, Gray in particular, drive the lane. Unless and until we get a true center teams are going to keep beating us with their larger players.
UCF’s Fall looks like he is rounding into shape. If he does that’s 2 losses we can already circle next year. As for Chicken, he’s not a big. I love the guy, but he’s just tall. He might still have contributed by defending the perimeter. I’ve seen him make life miserable for shorter players. That might have slowed down some of their 3-pt shooters. Our guys didn’t seem to be having much luck stopping them.
We can all sit back, sip our coffee and become armchair QBs. That’s part of being a ticket buying fan. But some of those who share their wisdom here haven’t set foot on campus in years. So I don’t buy everything that gets posted here. There are certainly enough things to point to. But with a true center this would have been a different season. Don’t you think Sampson knows that?
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One last thought. We need a center but so does every other team playing NCAA basketball. They are hard to find and harder to recruit. Having a true center this season didn’t turn UT into an overnight success. And a true center doesn’t have to be 7’ tall, although that is nice.
Remember the Washington Bullets won the 78 NBA championship with 6’8" Wes Unseld at center and our own 6’9" Elvin Hayes at power forward. Point is don’t get blinded by height. Mike Schultz was 6’9" and one of the best centers we ever had. Ask Arkansas. Just saying.
Right, but we have to have competence at the position. Meyer, god bless him, has terrible hands and was just a body. Nkali could block shots, but wasn’t reliable enough to get major minutes without fouling out. Chicken was too thin and a poor rebounder while never developing any semblance of an outside shot. Davis is good, but he’s not a center and didn’t have the height/weight to bang in there.
Sangoyomi looks to be better than Meyer/Nkali, but we’ll have to wait and see. Brady looks to be a slightly taller Davis type so I’m not sure he’ll be able to play the 5 consistently. White is a PF/SF hybrid and isn’t a center. Ideally we bring in one more big guy this class (cough…Harris…cough) to hopefully shore up the inside.
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Totally agree. Just sticking a body in there is seldom the answer. This year we had 2 bodies, but not 1 good center. Reason I mention guys like Unseld and Shultz is everyone wants that 7’ center. But there are shorter guys who can hold down that post. Paired with a good PF we could be solid in the paint.
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Chris Harris can rebound, and block shots. It seems like he is finally getting good coaching at San Jac. Would love to have him next year, but would not be the worst situation for him if he wants to start at San Jac, and put some good numbers up. He has an outside shot in making it to the NBA if he wants to continue to work on his game.
Breaon Brady is 6’9 245 legit, and strong. Has a 7’3 wingspan, and has a decent back to the basket game. Under CKS tutelage, he is more than capable to play center in college. The question is, will CKS put him in position to succeed in Houston.
You think Gray and VanBeck were the weak links last night? Are you serious? Without them we had no chance. The fact that CKS sat Gray for 9 minutes is a major factor in our loss. He was scoring and driving the lane. VanBeck had a better night than Galen who is our weak link in the back court.
I don’t know what it is about CKS, but as soon as we get up by a half dozen points, he pulls the contributors and goes into the stall. We lost because we have no front court.
Regarding SMU, they turned the corner with a HOF coach in Larry Brown and a now obviously good #2 coach in Tim Jankovich. Larry had the firepower to recruit very well, like Bobby Knight did at Tech. No one showed up in Garland but they sure came in droves once the arena was ready for the opening conference game against UConn. Hopefully the same happens with us. We sort of have our solid coach in Sampson without the benefit of great recruiting and enthusiasm like Larry Brown gave the Ponies for a couple years.
What about the UT-Arlington coach? They won their NIT game over BYU. And then Georgia lost their home game. UT and A&M didn’t even make the NIT.
One thing we have to remember is that we don’t pay all that well. The close losses to UConn in Hartford and to Akron were tough but we still finished #3 in conference. What does our staff make relative to the rest of the conference?
Sure, go out and find another Larry Brown. There’s one around every corner. But his success at SMU was due in large part to the upgraded Moody Coleseum. Take that away and Brown would not have darkened their door. Why? Because recruiting to SMU was a joke before the renovation. Even for Larry Brown. Had he taken the job before then he would have faced the same situation Sampson faces.
Most who opine here aren’t qualified to be a waterboy on one of Sampson’s teams. Once the new Fertitta Center is finished Sampson will be coaching (and recruiting) on a level field. Until then he just moves on while Lilliputians offer their wisdom and insight. Comes with the terrirory.
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We know the front court is weak, but they played a decent game until getting overwhelmed at the end. Davis had a decent game until he fouled out helping on their big guy.
I’ll give you Galen who seemed to be playing out of control last night. Wouldn’t call it his worst performance ever; he had some real bad ones earlier this year.
My point on Van Beck is that, while he scored 8 points, he was often in the wrong position on defense all night which cost us quite a bit. He also looked tentative on offense, bobbling a few balls and one bad turnover. He also passed up a couple of open looks during those “stall” stretches. I like Van Beck, but if he’s your 6th man, you’re not going far.
Gray could have scored a ton more last night. Sampson pulled him because his defense also lagged at times or he wouldn’t look for his shot. Sampson wanted him to score more, but he was being too unselfish. Sometimes, you need your scorers to take over; at times, Gray did, but he got passive at other times. Strange night for Gray. The pass off to Meyer with 27 seconds left down 1 gave the game away. It was at least the 3rd time he had done it last night. I’d rather have Hray trying to go to the hoop strong rather than give it to your weakest player on the court in that situation.
But yes, overall, our front court is a problem and improving that has to be where this coaching staff focuses their attention.
I’ll give you 245 on Brady, but everywhere lists him at 6’8" except for uhcougars.com. He should be a nice offensive presence down low (be wary of missed free throws), and they’ll probably have to play him at center there with the current depth. However, his defense is not a strong suit and He’d have a rough time against the guy last night or Tacko Fall. On a team with better center options, Brady is a PF.
His wingspan makes some up for his 6’9 height which is an average height for a college center. I’ve seen two full games of his. He is not really that small. He is bigger than Nkali. 
SMU got their renovated facility halfway through Brown’s 2nd season. That season they were ranked for the first time in 30 years, should have made the NCAA tournament, and made it to the NIT finals. Do you really think the 2nd half of a season in a new facility was a large part of their success that year? They were undefeated in their temporary home across town.
You can joke about finding another HOF coach. You’re right. But so many of the arguments against more success for UH now is we were the worst program in the nation and couldn’t get another decent coach. SMU was just as bad or worse of a program in fan support and facilities. Everyone laughed that there’s no way SMU could succeed or get a coach like Brown, but they did and they’re reaping the benefits in on court success, fan support, and money. Meanwhile we have no post season success, little increase in support, and no more money coming in other than Fertitta’s generosity.
For me, this is the bottom line. People can make all kinds of excuses, list reasons, whatever. The bottom line is with Sampson here we have had no post season success, the attendance looks better on paper but not like people are actually going, and there is zero buzz around the program. I am hoping that it changes when the newish arena opens up, but given the buzz around the program currently and the way the season ended those games at the Toyota Center are going to be depressing as hell.
SMU was willing to pay Brown $2.8M his 1st year and are paying Jankovich that much in his 1st year. We paid CKS less than $1M prior to this year and are paying him around half of what SMU is paying their coach and lower than 6 other teams in the AAC. For what we get with Sampson and how much we spend compared to his peers, we should be ecstatic. Unless we’re going to suddenly spend $3M on a coach, we aren’t getting a surefire HOFer walking through that door and we’re currently getting the best value for our dollar.
Also, using Brown/SMU as an example without mentioning that he had an assistant get sanctioned for NCAA violations, was suspended himself, and basically quit because he didn’t want to continue without cheating is disingenuous. I’d take Sampson and his “program” over Larry Brown’s cheating every day and twice on Sunday.
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SMU sells out almost every game at higher ticket prices. They had a huge increase in basketball donations. Now they’re getting NCAA tournament credits. They’ve more than covered Brown and Jankovich’s salaries.
Sometimes you get what you pay for. After all Levine was a value coach, 8-5 seasons and bowl games for under $ 1 million. Should we have been ecstatic for that?
Sampson and Brown were once up and coming young coaches that needed to prove themselves before they could go to a team that had the best coaches office, best lunch room, best video room, best practice facility, best training room, best practice wood floor court to compliment the best practice composite floor court which was just a notch below in quality to their game day imported Brazilian wood court. There are young coaches out there that are talented and in a worse conference and with worse facilities that would jump ship to come here for less or equal to Sampson’s salary. Don’t give me these crazy excuses that Sampson is it. As far as who those coaches are well that’s what the AD gets paid to do.
This thread is getting very nearly unreadable.
I would just hope that the complainers on here are each donating $50K+ per year to the UH BB program - along with 60 of their closest friends - so can they can be partially justified in complaining that UH isn’t paying our BB coach $3M+ per year.
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In four years, Larry Brown took SMU to two postseason tournaments. They did very well in the NIT in year two but lost in the first round of the NCAAs in year three. Four years and no NCAA wins. Jank has turned out to be a great #2 coach but you had to pay him very well while also paying Larry. They also reportedly doubled Ulric Malagi’s salary from his pay at UH. He was involved with Keith Frazier and the loss of the postseason in year four but he seemed to be instrumental in some of our recruiting success as well.
Who is the ace recruiter on our staff?
The renovated arena (and our new practice facility) are going to pay big dividends. Same is true at TCU.