Culture / Sporting Life

Inside the Pain and Pride of UH’s Unforgettable Elite Eight Warriors — a Crying Taze Moore Finds Mom, Jamal Shead Wishes For More Time and Kelvin Sampson Marvels at a Forever Group

Turning Adversity Into One of the All-Time Injury Runs and An All-Time Together Team

BY // 03.26.22

SAN ANTONIO — Taze Moore cannot stop crying so he heads right to where mom is waiting in the stands. Kenya Sutherland wraps her 6-foot-5, high-flying son, in a hug that somehow seems to engulf him, even though he towers over her. There are still mounds of confetti on the floor from Villanova’s celebration, but Taze Moore is not looking at that. Not if mom can help it.

March moments aren’t always happy, but the journey wouldn’t mean so much if it couldn’t end in some pain.

Taze Moore is devastated. After playing one of the best games of his life. All of his University of Houston teammates are too. The hallway leading to the University of Houston’s locker room at the AT&T Center is a road of pain, with coaches’ wives and players all crying and glassy eyed, all sad to see a beyond special season go. The end — Villanova 50, Houston 44 in an Elite Eight game in which neither team can score 30 points in any half — cannot take away from the unbelievable story of this 32-6 UH team.

Villanova 50, Houston 44 cannot erase all the memories, the double American Athletic Conference championships (regular season and conference tournament), the fact that Kelvin Sampson’s completely remade team is somehow one of the last eight teams standing in America. And that final cruel scoreboard certainly cannot erase the bonds Moore, Fabian White Jr., Josh Carlton, Kyler Edwards, Jamal Shead, J’Wan Roberts, Reggie Chaney and Ramon Walker Jr. built in this unforgettable season.

They will forever be The Eight Who Were Enough. For the Elite Eight.

Despite losing Marcus Sasser and Tramon Mark, two of the best guards in America, for the season in December, these depth-challenged Cougars still came within 40 minutes — and a few made threes (UH finishes 1 for 20 from three in this loss to Villanova) — from a Final Four repeat.

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That’s the stuff of sports movies, the kind of thing that will still have these guys texting each other and sharing inside jokes two decades from now.

“Just told ’em I love them, appreciate ’em,” Taze Moore says when I ask him if is able to share anything amid that tear filled Houston locker room. “They don’t know how much they mean to me. They’re going to be my brothers for life.”

This is that kind of team. The kind of team you’re lucky to play for once in your entire athletic life. With their should be Hall of Fame coach Kelvin Sampson showing the way, and sometimes ripping off his shirt in celebration, these Cougars didn’t just defy all the doubters. They nearly defied the laws of logic themselves. It will be a long time before another team goes on a March run quite like this.

Left for dead, injury rocked. . . and somehow refusing to give in. And not just refusing — somehow still hanging several banners.

“One thing that can’t nobody take away from us is that regular season championship, that Sweet 16 banner that’s probably going to be hanging up in the gym,” Moore says. “Hopefully that Elite Eight banner. I just hope the guys next year — the guys that fought with me — get back here next year.

“They know how this feels. And they should win it all.”

Taze Moore UH Houston Villanova Elite Eight
A crying Taze Moore is wrapped in a hug by his mom after Houston’s Elite Eight loss to Villanova. (Photo by Chris Baldwin)

Following up that Final Four berth with an Elite Eight run isn’t any kind of ending for this UH basketball program that returns plenty next season (Jamal Shead, J’Wan Roberts, Reggie Chaney, Ramon Walker, Tramon Mark, probably Sasser) and is adding five star power forward recruit Jarace Walker. But that’s talk for another night. This 2021-22 improbable mission 2021-21 UH team deserves plenty of love on its own.

The Eight Who Were Enough. For the Elite Eight.

UH’s New Banner Boys

Houston athletic director Chris Pezman tells PaperCity that an Elite Eight banner will be hung in the Fertitta Center for this unforgettable team. Already something to look forward to on a future October night.

“Absolutely,” Pezman says of the banner. “Those kids have earned it. That’s part of the recognition. And that thing will be there forever.”

Even Pezman, the athletic director, has tears in his eyes on this night. That is how much guys like Fabian White and Kyler Edwards have meant to the entire Houston athletic program.

“Teams that cry care,” Kelvin Sampson says, the coach who will go into next season still one win from 700 career victories. “There was a lot of tears in that locker room. Coaches and players. This team’s been through a lot this year.”

And then some. Just consider the incredible tale of Fabian White, who committed to Kelvin Sampson six full years ago and contributed to so many wins (more wins than any other Houston player ever), playing so many different roles for so many different Cougar teams, until he became the unquestioned player leader of an Elite Eight team as a graduate senior.

White would head to the locker room on his night with a white NCAA towel over his head, hiding his pain, back issues having robbed him of some of his effectiveness in the NCAA Tournament, but he’ll have so many memories from his unparalleled run. Nobody who really knows UH basketball is ever going to forget Fabian White.

“It’s just so cool what a program can do for — to — a young man,” UH assistant Kellen Sampson says when I ask about Fabian. “And how he went from a boy — and he’s leaving here ready to pay his own bills. And I think as a coach that’s our greatest challenge. That a family can trust us with a young person.

“. . . He’s going to be able to pay his own bills. And (Fabian) hung a lot of banners in our practice gym. He did an awesome job of decorating our facility while he was here.”

University of Houston forward Fabian White Jr. refused to let the Cougars win on clinch night. (Photo by F. Carter Smith)
University of Houston forward Fabian White Jr. has often refused to let the Cougars lose. (Photo by F. Carter Smith)

Villanova 50, Houston 44 cannot take away any of that. Kyler Edwards (1 for 12) and Jamal Shead (4 for 13) having off nights against a disciplined, committed, sound and tested Villanova defense does not take away from all the nights this old-young backcourt carried this remade, improbable championship team this season.

Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars defended to the end too, harassing Villanova into 28 percent shooting. With Jamal Shead holding Wildcats lifeline guard Collin Gillespie to one made shot in 36 minutes.

“Our kids guarded,” UH’s 66-year-old basketball lifer of a coach says. “Man, did we guard.”

For only the second time this season, Jay Wright’s Big East champs win a game without scoring at least 60 points.

Sometimes the moment isn’t yours. Sometimes you get the pain and the tears. But you also get the hugs, the acknowledgement from a fellow warrior teammate that you helped engineer a hell of a run.

J’Wan Roberts, the sophomore forward who showed what a difference maker he can be in this Elite Eight loss (seven points and eight rebounds off the bench, including four huge offensive rebounds), made it a point to seek out White, Edwards, Carlton and Moore after this one.

“I told them, I appreciate them for everything,” Roberts says, one of those official white NCAA towels draped over his head too. “Glad I shared the court with them. On and off the court — great guys. Ten, 15, 20 years from now, we’re still going to be able to text each other, call each other, look out for each other.”

Some bonds transcend time, place and setting. The pain of the end will give way to the joy of the run. Not right away. Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But before too long.

“We just wanted to win that so bad just so that we can keep playing together,” Shead says. “It wasn’t really for the win. It was just so we wouldn’t have to stop playing together.

“These guys mean so much to me. They really changed my life.”

The Eight Who Were Enough. For the Elite Eight.

“This team taught me a lot this year,” Kelvin Sampson says. “A learned a lot from them. I’m sure I learned a lot more from them than they did from me. How to overcome adversity. How to get up when you get knocked down.”

This 2021-22 Houston team cared so much, which may have made the end even harder.

Jamal Shead, Taze Moore and Caring Enough to Really Cry

Shead already has tears in his eyes when he misses a 3-pointer with 15 seconds left. The end hits this 19-year-old point guard, who will have so many more big games ahead, so hard. It’s like crashing into a wall. One minute you’re fighting with everything you have, convinced the comeback win to the Final Four is going to happen. The next moment. . . it’s all but over.

It’s just. . . so final.

So yes, Taze Moore will seek out his mom, both proud of how he played in the most pressurized game of all (the game a college basketball player needs to win to get to the Final Four) and absolutely crushed that it’s over.

“I’m just glad and grateful she could be here to see it,” Moore says softly. One of the loudest voices usually is barely speaking above a whisper now. Moore put up 15 points, 10 rebounds and three steals in the ultimate pressure game. His mom just didn’t comfort him. She saw all that he’s become.

“He hung a lot of banners in our practice gym. He did an awesome job of decorating our facility while he was here.” — UH assistant Kellen Sampson on Fabian White

Soon Moore will head back down the tunnel to the Houston locker room. The arena is clearing out. Villanova finished cutting down the nets a while ago now. It’s time for Taze Moore to rejoin his teammates, his warrior brothers, for one more time in the locker room.

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