After all the complaining during opponents runs or after we lose on the road. Without a seven footer, and our terrible free throwing, and how we haven’t replaced Sasser or Walker and how this or that is so bad…
This is absolutely amazing for this fan that started his journey as a fan with Alvin Brooks in 1996. What will it take for the rest of y’all to realize we are in an amazing time with a great team?
Totally get it. My first year in school was Ray McCallum’s last season. We ended that season. Ranked 313th of 326 in PPG scored. My first game I ever went to was a loss to Rice. Talk about some rough years. The rise of this program has been nothing short of a miracle
Was in school when James Dickey was the coach, more often than not I was the only student sitting in the student section with only 20 other people in the stands all together
To me it’s amazing… but not too surprising. I was in school for the end of McCallum/start of Penders. I was always saying we should be a basketball school like Memphis, but I understood that in Texas football will always be king. That said, with the number of moments we had where football was relevant nationally, I always knew basketball was capable of just as much if not more because you don’t need 50+ basketball players.
Now to the amazing part, first becoming one of the top programs in the country was never really on my radar. If you had shown me an image of Hofhienz today and those Big 12 standings when I was spread out at a game in 2012, I would have passed out.
The journey with Sampson has been so gratifying because it’s been a steady climb. The time has flown by… after this season he will have been here as long as Penders and Dickey combined. There were moments in their tenure where I thought “hey, this is going somewhere”… little did I know the amount of work it would really take to make UH hoops relevant, let alone one of the top programs in the country.
We should all be (and I think we are) so thankful for what Sampson has done.
It proves our journey for all of us is very different! My sr. Year at U of H we were #4 in the nation in Football and finished 2nd in the NIT with Otis Birdsong!
Sampson addressed Pesik in the Texas post game presser. He said … I DONT WANT 7 FOOTERS. They are slow. I love to coach against teams with 7 footers. Also said Jo Jo is now 6’ 8 NOT 6’ 7 and still growing as he is still 18 until June. Then said he DOESN’T need to get any taller. He wants guys like Francis, Roberts, Jo Jo in the 6’7 - 6’9 range with 7+ wingspans as they can move and switch like we do on Defense. While TA is only 6’ 6 he also has long arms.
I get frustrated with our offense too. BUT I know that Sampson will be defense and rebounding first. Playing defense as hard as we do will sap some of your offense . Until we dont show results there is no need to change.
I don’t think been a journey in NCAA sports quite like our journey. Went from the penthouse to the outhouse back to a luxury suite conference. I know there’s TCU but TCU hadn’t done squat im SWC for a long time when the SWC broke up
Fun to think back. My freshman year Otis Birdsong was our big star. We had good, but not great teams. The best post season we had in those years was losing the NIT final 94-91 to St. Bonaventure. We won 29 games that year.
This is very reminiscent of 1976. At that time the SWC was the best football conference top to bottom in the nation and we came in and won it our first year.
With the comparisons to Shead this year and KUs Sherron Collins in 2010 (consensus 1st team All American. Naismith.etc), I looked at the last of CUSA days.
A great run in 09-10 for that NCAA bid and a whole lot of so/so.
Switch to real time and its awesome.
UH Hoop a big part of the mix in a “historic” level of weekend scrap.
“This will feel like an Elite Eight island game in a juicy time slot”
