With Their Young UH Teammate Racked by Grief, DeJon Jarreau and Cougars Show That Kelvin Sampson’s Program is a True Family

DeJon Jarreau can see his teammate hurting, struggling with his grief in the middle of the game. So Jarreau wraps freshman point guard Marcus Sasser up in a hug as the University of Houston’s basketball team goes into a timeout huddle.

Jarreau will hold Sasser up if he needs to. That is what you d0 if someone you care about is in pain.

“I just went through the same thing,” Jarreau tells PaperCity. “I knew what he was feeling. And just to see him break down like that in the middle of the game kind of hurt me, too. Try to give him some love.”

On a Sunday that sees the entire sports world in shock over the death of Kobe Bryant, Sasser is hit by a much more personal pain. His great grandmother — a woman he was exceedingly close to — passed away over the weekend. UH coach Kelvin Sampson hears the news from Sasser’s father, Marcus Sasser Sr., in a lengthy text message on Saturday morning.

Marcus Sasser gets emotional and needs to leave practice on Saturday. He insists he wants to play Sunday — and plays well in No. 25 Houston’s 68-49 runaway from USF, hitting nearly half of the Cougars’ total threes in 27 impactful minutes — but the emotion of his grandmother’s death floors him again with 8:22 remaining, sending him to the sidelines in tears.

That is when Jarreau wraps his arms around Sasser and engulfs him in a hug. And other UH players follow.

Jarreau struggled with the death of his own grandmother last season, his first as a Cougar. Jarreau’s grandmother was a mother-like figure to him and he can relate to Sasser’s extreme pain, the kind you cannot always just play through.

That is what players like Sasser may have heard in the past at programs throughout the land. But thankfully we have come a ways when it comes to mental health in sports. Thankfully, this generation of athletes sees things a little differently.

“He got emotional tonight and had to leave the game,” Sampson says of Sasser, a true freshman from the Dallas area who is a starter and vital shooter for one of the country’s Top 25 team. “He was playing pretty good and I had to take him out. But to show you the kind of kids we have, they really rallied around Marcus.

“They put their arms around him and loved him and said all the right things.”

Sports teams love to call themselves a family. A lot of times that’s largely bunk, something that sounds good to say. Like giving 110 percent. But Sampson’s UH team looks like a true family — a caring one — when its young freshman is rocked by grief like he’s never felt before.

We all should learn to be nicer to each other in this topsy-turvy world of today. Compassion should be celebrated at least as much as slam dunks. With their teammate in tears, the University of Houston basketball team shows everyone how.

That it comes on the same Sunday that one of the world’s most famous athletes, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, beloved former UH baseball player John Altobelli and his wife Keri and daughter Alyssa all perish in that fiery helicopter crash makes it almost jump out even more.

But this type of compassion should be an everyday thing. We all need to take care of each other.

That Jarreau leads the way in wrapping up Sasser in a hug may surprise the national commentators who target what they see as his sometimes erratic game. But it does not surprise anyone in the UH program who’s spent much time around the young man from the hard streets of New Orleans with the easy smile.

The Other Side of DeJon Jarreau

Yes, DeJon Jarreau is the whirling point guard capable of turning a near triple double into flirting with a quadruple double that includes turnovers as he did that comeback win over UConn last week. Yes, he can sometimes drive Sampson more than a little crazy. But Jarreau is also the guy who cheered louder for his teammates than anyone from the bench when Sampson took him out of the starting lineup for a stretch earlier this season.

“I’m proud of DeJon — I really am,” Sampson says. “He’s had a lot of life adversity himself before he ever got here. From the first day of practice, I sometimes say kids don’t know whether they’re on foot or horseback. There’s another extreme to that when to comes to (DeJon).

“But the thing that helps DeJon and helps me coach him is he’s such a high character kid. When I say a good kid, I mean he is a great, great young man. And character matters.”

It is easy for a coach to get mad at DeJon Jarreau — and almost impossible to stay angry at him.

And in a game when Jarreau plays more in control than perhaps he ever has, putting up 12 points, six assists and one lone turnover against South Florida, his greatest play comes in how he aids his grieving teammate. It means more than UH moving to 16-4 (6-1 in the American Athletic Conference) – as big as this might seem to everyone come March. It means more than Sampson’s deep team completely dismantling a foe despite not having a single player score more than 12 points.

This is real life stuff. This is helping out someone hurting in need of a shoulder. No one needs to tell DeJon Jarreau, whose rapper cousin was gunned down and killed in a New Orleans parking lot on the weekend of his grandmother’s funeral, that life is tough.

Jarreau’s found something at UH though, something with his tough-minded basketball lifer of a coach who never lets him coast.

“I love our relationship,” Jarreau tells PaperCity of his back-and-forths with Sampson. “He gets on me a lot — and I know it’s for me to do better. I know I can do better. Sometimes I just have to laugh it off.

“I listen to everything he says, but sometimes I just have to laugh it off and get on to the next play.”

You have to be strong minded to play for Kelvin Sampson. But you also have to care. A lot.

Thankfully, we have come a ways when it comes to mental health in sports. Thankfully, this generation of athletes sees things a little differently.

DeJon Jarreau and his UH teammates clearly care. For each other, too. Marcus Sasser is not built like an ordinary freshman.

“There’s not many 6-foot freshmen that weigh 200 pounds,” Sampson says. “He’s got a body that can absorb contact, but also repel it. When (fellow freshman guard) Caleb (Mills) hits a ball screen, it’s like a twig snapping. Marcus hits the ball screen — he usually delivers the blow. And he’s our best shooter.”

Sasser is built tough — and plays even tougher. You will not out fight him for anything.

“Marcus had me at hello,” Sampson says. “I just thought he was a Cougar basketball player for what we do. He wasn’t a ballyhooed guy. He wasn’t one of those stars, whatever that means. But I knew he fit us.”

Yet, even the toughest players — even the toughest people you know — hurt and grieve.  They need help sometimes, too.

With a freshman molded like a mini tank trying to fight through tears in the middle of a game, his UH teammates wrap him up in hugs, tell him it’s all right to let it out.

“When I heard the news, I just tried to comfort him,” Jarreau says. “I went through the same thing last October with my grandmother. I knew how he was feeling because I just went through it.”

This type of scene will never make big headlines or dominate the talking head sports shows. But on one of the more painful sports days ever, it’s just about the best thing you’ll ever see.