Kelvin Sampson Shows His Chase McCarty Belief With a Bold Timeout Play Call — Taking Down BYU and AJ Dybansta Took More Than Kingston Flemings

KANSAS CITY — Kelvin Sampson draws up a play for Chase McCarty in the timeout huddle even though McCarty hasn’t hit a shot all game. “The fact he hadn’t made one made me made think he was going to,” Sampson says. So in the biggest huddle of the game, with Sampson’s University of Houston team clinging to a 61-58 lead, with freshman wonder point guard Kingston Flemings still stuck on the bench with four fouls, UH’s Hall of Fame Finalist coach conjures up another bit of March magic.

He diagrams a play designed to get McCarty, a 20-year-old who averaged 3.9 points per game over the course of the entire season, an open shot from three. Sampson is as good as any coach in the game on out-of-timeout plays, having picked up plenty from guys like Scott Skiles and Steve Kerr during his NBA sabbatical. But this is more than a well-designed action.

It is a shot of belief right to McCarty, a player Sampson knows he’s going to need to go deep into the NCAA Tournament again.

Kelvin gets Chase an open look — on a Milos Uzan pass (again) — and the redshirt freshman buries it.

An early March moment. Go ahead and bank on more.

“It was huge,” Flemings tells PaperCity of McCarty’s three. “It was a great call by Coach. And I mean Chase was talking about it. He kind of was reading the defense the whole game. So he did a great job slipping. Wide open shot.

“Chase doesn’t miss those.”

Not anymore. McCarty is shooting 55.6 percent from three (10 of 18) in this redirected 27-5 Houston team’s current four-game winning streak. BYU coach Kevin Young may not expect someone who was UH’s ninth or tenth man not long ago to usher his team out of the Big 12 Tournament (McCarty didn’t even get off the bench in Houston’s win at BYU back in early February), But McCarty’s teammates do.

Even more importantly, his coach expects him to — calling McCarty’s number when it matters most.

“It’s just the right play call at the right time for the right player,” Sampson says when I ask him about the call, trying to dismiss any notion it’s special.

It brings back memories of the perfect inbounds play that Sampson called that beat Purdue in essentially an NCAA Tournament home game for the Boilermakers, pushing UH to the Elite Eight last March. JoJo Tugler’s beautiful basketball mind maximized that play with Milos Uzan inbounding the ball to Tugler, who then dropped a dead-on bounce pass back to a cutting Uzan for the game-winning layup.

The stakes are not close to as high as that in this conference tournament quarterfinal in one of the last games played on the Big 12’s cutting-edge (and slippery) glass LED floor. But the payback in having an even more confident Chase McCarty could be Big Dance priceless.

Kelvin Sampson’s Houston team does not just move on to a rematch with Kansas (the only team to beat UH by double digits this season) in the second (8:30 pm, ESPN) of Friday night’s Final Four worthy Big 12 semifinals. It gets to keep building. To keep growing together.

“This team, we’ve got a chance to go far,” Uzan tells PaperCity. “I think it’s super important we stay connected and keep on going. We can get so much better.”

That’s the thing. This particular Houston team could use more reps together. An extended Big 12 Tournament run could be just what the March doctor ordered. Kelvin Sampson’s team already boasts an elite closer in Flemings, the teenage point guard and soon-to-be Top 6 NBA Draft pick. Despite spending more than five minutes of game action on the bench after picking up his fourth foul, Flemings does not hesitate when he finally gets back in.

“It was huge. It was a great call by Coach. And I mean Chase was talking about it. He kind of was reading the defense the whole game. So he did a great job slipping. Wide open shot. Chase doesn’t miss those.” — Kingston Flemings on Chase McCarty’s three

After McCarty’s 3-pointer, Flemings hits the put-away dagger, rising up to drill a 3-pointer off the dribble with 1:27 left to push UH’s lead back to six at 67-61. BYU and its own freshman superstar AJ Dybantsa’s Big 12 Tournament run will end with 93 points in three games, enough to break Kevin Durant’s conference tournament record. Even as Houston’s defensive stopper Emanuel Sharp makes life difficult for him despite giving up six inches to the 6-foot-9 Dybantsa.

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson on holding AJ Dybantsa to 3 for 10 shooting, only two free throw attempts in 2nd half: “Be in the gaps early. Stay in the gaps. It’s almost like building a wall. And that’s why he didn’t get anything easy. Our defense was great in the second half.” pic.twitter.com/NnqwZUFLWt

— Chris Baldwin (@ChrisYBaldwin) March 13, 2026

Dybantsa might be the future No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. But he does not hit the big shots in the second half. That is a Kingston and McCarty thing.

“They don’t expect him to take it,” UH assistant coach Anthony Goldwire tells PaperCity of Flemings’ rise-up three. “But we know he has that in him. That’s in his DNA. That’s why he’s here. That’s why we love him.”

JoJo Tugler is here to impact everything and the 12-point, six-rebound, four-assist, four-steal, two-block line the man with the 7-foot-6 wingspan puts up against BYU in 28 minutes is a thing of basketball beauty. Letting Tugler face the basket, giving him a chance to see the entire floor, is one of the adjustments Kelvin Sampson and this elite UH coaching staff made in the wake of that Halley’s Comet Houston rare three-game losing streak.

The closer and the unicorn are givens for this still growing 27-5 team, But chasing shots for Chase is something new. A shot at a March wrinkle.

“Kingston doesn’t feel pressure,” Sampson says in a back hallway of the T-Mobile Center. “I don’t think Chase (McCarty) does either.”

An early March moment. Go ahead and bank on more.