Houston men’s basketball team tops the season for first time since 1983

In April 2014, the University of Houston hired Kelvin Sampson as its men’s basketball coach. Sampson said he made the move because he hadn’t coached at the college since February 2008, when he resigned under pressure from Indiana for violating NCAA rules related to unauthorized phone calls to new recruits. was remarkable.

Still, Houston’s job wasn’t nearly as glamorous as it was in Indiana when Sampson took over. back to relevance.

In late November, Houston was ranked #1 in the AP poll for the first time since February 28, 1983. This is a team that features future Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

After losing 71-65 to Alabama on December 10, Houston dropped to fifth in the AP poll. But the Cougars (16-1) haven’t lost since, and on Monday he was in first place again, with a total of 1,457 points and his 34 first-place votes. They were 2nd place Kansas (14-1) who got his 1st place votes with 1,440 points and 22 votes and 3rd place Purdue (15-1) who got 1,386 points and 1st place votes he got 4 votes. 1).

Houston’s top ranking is a testament to Sampson’s succession of founding programs.

Before Sampson’s arrival, the Cougars had only made four NCAA Tournament appearances in the last 30 years, losing in the first round each time. The last time they won an NCAA tournament game was in 1984, when they lost the tournament’s championship game for the second straight season.

That’s not to say Sampson was an overnight sensation. Houston didn’t make it to the NCAA until his fourth season in 2018, but since then the Cougars have advanced to the tournament every season, with the exception of 2020, when the event was canceled due to COVID-19. increase.

In 2021, the Cougars advance to the Final Four for the first time in 37 years. They qualified for the Elite Eight last year, even after guards Marcus Susser and Tramon Mark suffered season-ending injuries in December.

This season, Houston finished third in the preseason AP poll. This is the Cougars best preseason ranking since he was second in the 1967-68 season. That optimism was based on the fact that Sasser and Mark were back to health and the Cougars added two talented freshmen in forward Jareth Walker and guard Terrence Arceneaux. In his 247Sports Composite ranking for the 2022 high school class, Walker ranked him 11th and Arceneaux his 40th.

Susser, a preseason AP First Team All-American, leads the Cougars with 15.8 points per game. The rest of the starting lineup consists of Walker, who is averaging 10.4 points per game and he has 6.1 rebounds. Marking an average of 10.1 points per game. His forward J’Wan Roberts is averaging 9.9 points per game and his 7.4 rebounds is a team-high. Guard Jamal Shedd is averaging 7.5 points and his team-leading 5.2 assists.

Unlike other schools that have relied on transfers, Houston has built winners through superior recruitment and development. In fact, all of the Cougars’ top nine scorers attended the school after high school.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Houston was ranked No. 1 by analyst Ken Pomeroy. The Cougars are second in adjusted defensive efficiency and tenth in adjusted offensive efficiency, making them the only schools besides Connecticut and Kansas to rank in the top ten in each of those categories.

The Cougars will face South Florida on Wednesday night at the Fertitta Center on campus. They have averaged over 7,300 fans per home game this season, topping the arena’s 7,035 capacity and up from Sampson’s 2,635 in his first season.

Houston is on track to win the remaining 14 games of the regular season, according to KenPom. This is largely due to the talent of the Cougar and the fact that Houston is playing in his conference with his American Athletic, which ranks him eighth in KenPom’s league rankings.

Starting next season, Houston will participate in KenPom’s highest rated league, the Big 12 Conference, for the second year in a row and eighth time in the past decade. After that, the Cougars regularly face the top 25 teams in the league. It will be a tougher schedule than it is now, but with Sampson at the helm, Houston will rise to the challenge and be in contention for the conference and NCAA titles.