Houston guard Milos Uzan smiles with the team after winning the Big 12 Championship, on Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Houston, Texas. | Raphael Fernandez/The Cougar
Less than a minute remained in a 62-59 contest between No. 4 Houston and No. 10 Texas Tech at United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas, with the entire college basketball world watching.
Graduate guard L.J. Cryer had the ball stripped on a drive, but he quickly recovered possession and swung it to junior guard Milos Uzan, who relocated to get himself open on the left wing.
A late closeout wasn’t enough to alter the 3-point shot, which rattled in and drained the venue of all its energy along with it.
The shot was more than just a dagger: it was the biggest shot of Uzan’s career.
Not because of his then career-high 22 points that the 3-pointer gave him, but because it showed that his confidence ascended to another level.
“I just think that this team has so much belief in me when my shots are there they want me to shoot it,” Uzan said. “Shoot, I feel like I can knock down any shot at any time during the game, so for me it’s about continuing to have the right mindset and continuing to be aggressive.”
It was one of his best performances in his rise to prominence, which all circles back to when Big 12 conference play began on Dec. 30.
A strong conference start for Uzan
Houston opened conference play at Oklahoma State, where Uzan had one of his best all-around outings of the season to that date.
He scored 12 points and shot 50% from the field while dishing out six assists to only one turnover.
His decision-making was on full display, from his passing to knocking down open threes with zero hesitation and attacking the basket off the catch.
On a night when graduate forward J’Wan Roberts put up 20 points and 11 rebounds, while Cryer contributed 18 points alongside four 3-pointers, coach Kelvin Sampson was quick to point out how far Uzan was coming along.
“The guy I was most proud of tonight was Uzan,” Sampson said. “The guy that grew the most from those losses (Auburn, Alabama and SDSU) was Uzan.”
The adjustment period
There’s nothing quite like the demands of playing under Sampson. While it’s true that it brings out the very best in players, getting used to the intensity, physicality and grittiness it takes to thrive in Houston doesn’t happen overnight.
In Uzan’s case, he was also coming in with the lofty expectations of replacing a beloved fan-favorite in point guard Jamal Shead.
“I talked to Jamal a little bit before I got here so I had an idea of what it was, I just think it took me a little bit to actually understand it better,” he said.
To compound matters even more, Uzan suffered a broken nose that required surgery in October. This sidelined him for three crucial weeks, during which he would have been getting more familiar with his new teammates.
“I had to get my conditioning back. At that time in October too, we were playing a lot, getting up and down and I missed out on that,” he said. “Just finding chemistry with the guys, that’s probably where I was a little slow.”
One common theme in Houston’s three early non-conference losses was that Uzan was still getting accustomed to playing a Cougar brand of basketball on both ends. He fouled out in all three November games against Auburn, Alabama and San Diego.
Uzan also committed eight turnovers in those three losses while only distributing eight assists.
“The thing we’re emphasizing to Milos is that it’s not easy to come here and be the point guard after what we’ve seen around here the last 10 years,” Sampson said after a 71-59 win over Butler. “There’s a tendency to want to rent. And he’s gotta realize that he owns this.”
To Sampson’s point, Galen Robinson, Dejon Jarreau and Jamal Shead were all point guards that elevated their teams and left a long-lasting imprint on Houston basketball. But all of them did it in different ways.
In the four non-conference games that remained, Uzan showed more ball security and comfortability as the team’s point guard, averaging 4.5 assists to only 0.8 turnovers per game in that stretch where the Cougars went 4-0.
Even still, for Uzan to find the success he sought when he transferred from Oklahoma, he had to stand out instead of fitting in.
Where Uzan could stand out was with his ability to efficiently score on all three levels: beyond the arc, in the midrange and at the basket.
Finding the consistency
After Uzan’s outing at Oklahoma State, he continued improving his assist-to-turnover ratio across Houston’s next five conference games.
Though Houston won those five games by an average differential of over 19 points, Uzan’s scoring was still a step behind his progress as a passer but then came Utah.
Uzan scored a season-high 14 points while shooting 66.7% from the field, matching his second-best mark of the season efficiency-wise.
“I’m just trying to get better every day, and trusting in my craft. And I think it’s showing,” Uzan said after the Cougars’ 70-36 route of Utah in January.
His season-high wouldn’t last long, as he would go on to surpass it in Houston’s improbable 92-86 double-overtime victory over No. 13 Kansas.
Uzan’s growing impact was evident everywhere. He was one assist and one rebound shy of a triple-double, and his deflection on Kansas’ inbound attempt set up graduate guard Mylik Wilson’s game-tying three to send the game to overtime.
Sampson patted Uzan sitting to his right and noted how far he had come from the beginning of the season as he morphed into a more well-rounded guard.
“He couldn’t do that in November. He wasn’t ready. He was deferring, almost apologizing for not passing the ball to somebody,” Sampson said.
Catching national attention
As Uzan continued to improve in all facets and take the reigns on Houston’s offense, he began to garner the attention of prominent analysts around the country, including members of ESPN’s College GameDay panel ahead of Houston’s Feb. 22 top-10 matchup against No. 8 Iowa State.
“It took (Milos) a little bit of a transition period to understand what this program encompasses, and how hard you have to play,” ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg said. “Watching tape from early in the season, and then watching tape now… it’s just amazing the way he’s grown.”
Jay Williams, former point guard turned analyst, who had a decorated three-year run with Duke from 1999 to 2002, couldn’t say enough about Uzan adapting to a new style of play and coach while praising his rising confidence.
“That permeates through the rest of the team. When you have a teammate that is looking out for your best interests and is an orchestrator on the floor, you want to play for a guy like that,” Williams said.
The following day, Uzan vindicated their praises with a very efficient 19 points on 70% shooting alongside four assists as a part of the Cougars’ 62-58 win over the Cyclones.
As the Big 12 regular season conference schedule came to a close, Uzan’s assist numbers declined, while his turnover totals took a jump.
It can be attributed to numerous reasons: an increase in on-ball reps and volume of shots, and defenses keying in on him as he looked to create more for himself.
Either way, it didn’t stop Houston’s momentum. The Cougars finished the regular season 26-4 and 19-1 in the conference, bringing home a second consecutive Big 12 Conference title.
A March of firsts
Uzan never advanced past the second round of the Big 12 tournament with Oklahoma, but didn’t let his inexperience deter the winning attitude that’s been ingrained in everything the Cougars have accomplished in their 2024-25 campaign.
“The culture here is to win, compete, in everything you do,” Uzan said after Houston advanced to its seventh consecutive conference title game.
24 hours later, his career-high 25 points led Houston past Arizona to capture the Cougars’ first-ever Big 12 tournament championship.
Those casually tuning in, especially at this time of the year, maybe taken aback by how far Uzan has come since November, but it’s no surprise to those who he’s around every day, especially Sampson.
“I think the season for him based on my experience has been exactly the way I thought it would go. I thought he’d struggle early, get confidence as he went and play his best basketball later,” Sampson said.
Uzan, for the first time, will have the opportunity to play his best basketball in the NCAA tournament, which eluded him in his two years with the Oklahoma Sooners.
He couldn’t hide his elation as he sat beside his teammates on Selection Sunday, where Houston was announced the No.1 seed in the Midwest region of the NCAA Tournament.
“It was definitely exciting,” Uzan said. “I’m excited to be here, can’t wait to get going and see what we do.”
Sunday gave Uzan and the Cougars the satisfaction that their hard work had paid off, beginning in practice last June.
“We worked the whole season to become a No. 1 seed, to win the Big 12. I feel like we’re reaching every goal we’ve set for ourselves so far, and we got one more we’re trying to get,” Uzan said.
This Cougars team is comprised of veterans, from sixth-year man Roberts who has never missed the tournament, to Cryer who reached the mountaintop with Baylor in 2021.
It would only be fitting if first-timer Uzan were the one to help deliver Houston its first-ever Naismith Trophy.
