People love to remove the context of a program … and love to frame it to coach only
Rob Williams as a recruit came at a time the program was struggling badly and his presence changed the entire trajectory of our program… Rob took over a bad program and in 2 years had them in the tournament at scary level usage …bigger than him becuase he came, others came … every phi slama doc states this
The state of a program changes your perspective on who you recruit… people saying Sampson wouldn’t…
Devonta pollard … if you know you know, I won’t dive into that
If an identical player to pollard’s history came to our program today, we wouldn’t recruit him …
but at that time we had to beg an unknown 3star in Galen to play at Houston, wasn’t even that touted, and he was a legacy at that, to show the state of the program… in the 1st 3 years of Sampson, we’d have without question taken Rob… not only that thrown the biggest celebration and given him his “Rob” jersey too… and we’d have turned around a ton faster
If Rob had come at the end of phi slama, we either wouldn’t have recruited him or he would have had to conform… look at Winslow who came at the end… he was just as touted as Rob, but he came with the mentality that he had to earn his right to be among Jama… and not that he was doing us a favor
the big point: people are saying this or that coach wouldnt take this player… i noted that state of the program when they commit matters… (sampson would have taken rob when he 1st joined the program the 1st 3 yrs - gave an example of questionable add)
there was a counter point that UH wasnt struggling when rob came…
the program was in a state that nobody major wanted to come to UH and it wasnt seen as a major program… this was stated in multiple phi slama jama documentaries
but if we are stating any post season as a great season… we made a post season tournament 7 of the last 11 years before sampson came…we didnt really have a turn around then when samspon came
Rob Williams played for Texas High School HOF Coach Boyce Honea at Milby HS, himself a UH graduate. Rob’s cousin, Ken “Juice” Williams was a couple of years older than Rob, and also played at UH. Juice was like Fluff McKiver, before Fluff McKiver. He never saw a shot he couldn’t make.
Besides Rob and Juice, UH also had Milby basketball alumni Chuck O’Neal and Alton Ford.
again if you state the program was NOT “struggling badly” when sampson took over…
we averaged 20 wins a season for the decade before sampson came …we were in a post season tournament 7 of the last 11 year before he took over…
im not wrong, i stand by 100% what i said…i used a similar bar for both sides…if you want to lower the bar for 1 side, under your subjective opinion, thats fine … but we lower it for the otherside aswelll…
we all agree that the erea before sampson took over we were struggling bad… no one will debate that… despite occasional nit/ncaa tournament… but have a different bar for an earlier era
ps the player interviews from the espn Phi slamma jamma documentary literally agreed with my sentiment , and that was a major storyline of the doc
“it wasnt cool to play for university of houston” “they were like a comet, came out of nowhere”
The three seasons before Rob came to Houston they were:
1978-79 16-15
1977-78 25-8 (made ncaa tournament)
1976-77 29-8
The ncaa tournament expanded from 22 teams to 32 in 1975 and to 40 teams in 1979. Also up until 1975 no conference could have more then two teams. The 76-77 team went 29-8, was 13-3 in the SWC (2nd place), made the final against Arkansas and didn’t make the ncaa tournament. So saying they didn’t have “a single tourney win in a decade” is NOT “struggling badly” especially when you know the context of how things were back then.
You keep trying to define why they weren’t struggling badly… I said I didn’t care about the term… but just said it as a bar for defining where the state of the program in 2 different times… that they were similar…
the word struggling badly is subjective…
Kansas is considered struggling for “not advancing” in the tournament the 1st time in 20 years … “struggling” is clearly an “opinion” term – you trying to make your “opinion” fact is nonsense and ridiculous
I clearly noted the clarifier of “ill agree that we weren’t struggling before Rob came …if you admit we weren’t struggling before Sampson came” i dont care where you draw the line as long as its even everyehere
You ignored that point fully … despite asking 4 times now… someone who hyper focuses on 1 point and ignores the full question… multiple times, knows they are wrong
And lastly the coaches and player of phi slama jama said the program was struggling when Rob came … you are random and anonymous… I trust the players over you… you are not saying I’m wrong, you are saying the phi slama jama players are wrong, who have noted the exact same point i did… and you don’t know more than them
