The UH men’s basketball team joins in a huddle at summer practice, where they prepare to adjust, adapt and stick together. | Courtesy of UH Athletics
Houston Cougars men’s basketball doesn’t kick off the 24-25 season for months. However, the team is laying the groundwork for success with renewed health and an unreplicable culture as they look to get over the hump.
“We start focusing now. It started when we had our first meeting,” graduate guard L.J. Cryer said. “Coach Sampson set the tone and since then it’s been: win now.”
The Cougars have excelled at drumming up wins. In their inaugural Big 12 season, UH tallied over 30 victories and captured a Big 12 regular-season title in front of their home crowd, which never witnessed a loss in Fertitta Center.
The team entered March Madness as the top seed in the South Region, before widespread injuries, including one to nationally recognized point guard Jamal Shead, kept them from advancing past the Sweet 16 for the second straight season.
This year, the Cougars will look to take care of business without Shead’s renowned leadership presence. However, redshirt junior guard Emanuel Sharp has accepted the challenge of following in Shead’s footsteps.
“There’s gotta be more voices because he was so loud,” Sharp said. “We gotta pick up where he left off. We all gotta be louder on the court during conditioning. It can’t be one guy, it’s a team effort.”
The Cougars have assembled a team with more depth than they have seen in years, partly thanks to extended eligibility due to COVID-19 that has gifted UH another year with Cryer and graduate forward J’Wan Roberts.
Comebacks from injuries will help Houston construct a strong bench presence. Junior guard Terrance Arceneaux will play for the first time since tearing his Achilles in December, and sophomore Joseph Tugler will take the floor again following a season-ending foot injury.
Even for new faces like junior guard Milos Uzan, a transfer from Oklahoma, the Cougar identity is not a foreign idea but a standard you commit to when you arrive in Houston.
“We know what Houston is about,” Uzan said. “I expected some of this work, it’s challenging, but that is what I want.”
Houston men’s basketball engages in a rigorous summer schedule. The program runs for four weeks, takes a week off, and then resumes for another four-week session, Each week consists of four hours of skill instruction and four hours in film sessions or the weight room.
Typically, the team meets on Monday and Tuesday, takes a recovery day on Wednesday and then reconvenes for two more workdays before the weekend.
“We have to go through a lot of hard things together,” Cryer said. “We have to lean on each other to get through it all summer, and that’s where camaraderie comes from.”
The desire to achieve greatness doesn’t mean the days will be easy. Sampson often commends his team for showing up 15 minutes before practice is even scheduled to begin.
“These guys are no different from any of the guys we had before,” Sampson said. “ I may have initially created this culture, but these players sustain it. They make it better and they hold each other accountable.”
That drive, determination and togetherness are what the Cougars will need to pull from during the tough stretches of the season in hopes of mounting a historic run and possibly capturing that first elusive national title.
“Knowing the team that we have and the culture that we built here, there’s no doubt we are going to make it back to the tournament,” Roberts said. “We make it about the little things we can control, and once we put all the pieces together we can make it to our goal.”
