Don’t Sleep On Isiah Harwell — Houston’s Other 5 Star Freshman Is Starting To Emerge, 5 AM Dad Workouts, Investment Shots and Sampson Belief

Isiah Harwell arrived at the University of Houston as hyped as fellow big name freshmen Chris Cenac Jr. and Kingston Flemings. Maybe even more hyped than Flemings, who unlike Harwell, didn’t make the McDonald’s All-American Game roster. But this rocket ship largely stayed anchored to the launch pad. Offseason knee surgery to help clean up a previously repaired ACL robbed Harwell of a summer and set him back. Harwell’s name largely fell off the headline driven national college basketball radar as Flemings starred and Cenac showed off his rare inside-outside skills.

“It’s tough coming in and you expect something and then you get something totally different,” UH assistant coach Hollis Price tells PaperCity of Harwell. “From the outside everybody’s saying how great Isiah is and how he’s gonna be a starter. But then you get rocked by not starting.

“But it shows the toughness in him. And I told him, his thing is he has to win the day.”

Isiah Harwell is starting to win more and more days. The latest came in seventh-ranked Houston’s 77-55 dismantling of Scott Drew’s proud Baylor program. The Cougars moved to 15-1, 3-0 in the Big 12 with Harwell hitting four threes, blocking two shots and adding three rebounds while matching his season-high in minutes (24).

Harwell did not even shoot that well (4 for 14 overall), but he’s a 6-foot-6, 220-plus-pound presence, an impact maker. UH coach Kelvin Sampson’s never lost sight of Harwell’s importance to this team, what this freshman brings that no one else on the roster really can. Sampson’s determinedly invested minutes in Harwell, knowing that this particular Houston team will be hard pressed to challenge for a national championship without him,

“Isiah’s a very talented young man,” Sampson tells PaperCity. “He is a good player. And I thought he was really playing well the other night (against Texas Tech before getting head butted). “The fact that he made four threes tonight is not nearly as important as the fact he got 12 of them.

“Because I thought he was being aggressive. Now those are investment shots.”

The potential return is a much more dangerous UH team, one with a wildcard that other teams have trouble accounting for in their defensive game plans. When Harwell came off the bench roaring vs. an Elite Eight worthy Arkansas team, hitting two threes within minutes of entering the game, helping push the Cougars fast break with two assists, John Calipari’s team seemed to break a little.

Kingston Flemings and Chris Cenac, they expected. But this. . . This is too much.

Isiah Harwell always has been a huge part of the vision Kelvin Sampson held for this Houston team.

“He’s coming back from a major knee surgery,” Sampson tells PaperCity of Harwell. “An ACL. That means you’ve spent more time in rehabbing in street clothes and not playing. Of course, it’s easy for people to forget. We didn’t have Isiah from June until late September. So when we were in November, that was his July.”

Harwell will play his 15th game of the season when UH hosts West Virginia on Tuesday night at the Fertitta Center (7:30 pm, FS1). He’s starting to find his way, showing more and more of his talent.

He came to Houston for these Big 12 battles, for the even bigger games in the NCAA Tournament to come. Harwell’s official visit to Houston as a five star recruit came when Sampson’s team obliterated blue blood Kansas 76-46 to clinch its first Big 12 title in its first season in the Power 4 league. He’s long been hooked on the Houston winning.

“That’s what I came here for,” Harwell says.

Harwell’s long embraced the work of basketball, the grind of trying to get better. He and his older brothers Deshun and Malek used to go to the local community center for 5 am daily workouts in Pocatello, Idaho with their father Ron Harwell. This happened to be the time that Ron Harwell knew they could have the tiny gym to themselves, a window before he had to report to his demanding job at the Idaho National Laboratory, which is involved in nuclear research.

At first, Ron Harwell would wake his boys up for the early morning gym sessions. But before long, he told them they needed to get themselves up by 4:30 am to take responsibility and show they wanted to get these workouts in. Otherwise, Ron Harwell told them, he’d sleep in.

“They started being up,” Ron Harwell tells PaperCity. “I don’t think there was a time they missed practice. They were up and ready. And it just became a way of life. . . We worked out to like 6:30, 7 am. Then I’d have to get work. Obviously, I’d be a little bit late getting in sometimes, but if practice was going good, I’m willing to risk it. . .

“I can sleep when I’m dead. Right now, this is my time for my children.”

Isiah Harwell’s time at Houston is coming. He is part of the defensive lineup that suffocates Baylor, turning Scott Drew’s thrown-together team into an unsure mess. Coming in after Kingston Flemings picks up his second foul just three minutes and 46 seconds into the Baylor game, Harwell is part of lineups that suffocate the Bears’ offense.

“Our defense got better when Kingston went out,” Kelvin Sampson says. “Because Isiah could go to (guard Tounde) Yessoufou and now we have three good defenders on the floor at the same time. But you know, we’ve just got to keep working with Kingston (on his defense).

“And with his attitude and his character, he’s just going to continue to get better. He’s just a great kid.”

Isiah Harwell is a 19-year-old whose entire family is basketball obsessed. His dad played at Idaho State, his older brother Malek at Boise State and Cal Poly, his older brother Deshun at the College of Idaho. When Isiah Harwell hurt his knee, he leaned on them too. “My brother (Malek) had an ACL surgery one time,” Isiah Harwell says. “Just talked to him and he talked me through it.”

“The fact that he made four threes tonight is not nearly as important as the fact he got 12 of them. Because I thought he was being aggressive. Now those are investment shots.” —UH coach Kelvin Sampson on freshman Isiah Harwell

Earning His Way Back

Ron Harwell was determined to make sure Isiah received better, more expert medical care than Malek did at Boise State. Isiah Harwell signing an NIL deal with Klutch Athletics, the sportswear brand started by super agent (and LeBron James buddy) Rich Paul, while still in high school helped provide an avenue to top doctors. Joining a powerhouse college program with a topnotch medical staff became one of the Harwells’ priorities too, one UH filled.

Now Ron Harwell can see his son’s confidence returning game by game.

“I think last game kind of showed he’s a little bit more comfortable with just shooting and not having to worry about missing a basket,” Ron Harwell says. “As long as he plays the kind of defense that the coaches ask him to, and he doesn’t worry about the minutes, he’s good.”

Isiah Harwell and his older brothers Deshun and Malek used to go to the local community center for 5 am daily workouts in Pocatello, Idaho with their father Ron Harwell. This happened to the time that Ron Harwell knew they could have the tiny gym to themselves, a window before he had to report to his demanding job at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Ron Harwell is an engineer and he tried to ground his kids in physics and how things like the center of gravity can work to their advantage on the basketball court. “I just tried to implement things in a science-based way,” says Harwell, who coached Isiah until he realized that his son already stood out as the best high school player in Idaho in the ninth grade and needed better competition. Ron Harwell found himself having to play his son at center because he was the tallest player he had.

Harwell would enroll at Wasatch Academy — an elite prep basketball school — in Mount Pleasant, Utah and leave home as a 15-year-old. Soon UH assistant K.C. Beard became such a fixture at Isiah Harwell’s games that Harwell still marvels at how often the coach made the flight and long drive.

“I don’t think there was any way that K.C. was ever going to allow himself to be beat on a great player from Idaho,” UH lead assistant Kellen Sampson laughs. “He was not going to allow that to happen.” Like Isiah Harwell, Beard is also a native of Idaho — in his case Parma, a town of less than 2,000 people that sits about a four hours from the Pocatello, Harwell’s hometown of more than 56,000.

“Isiah doesn’t want you to give him anything,” Houston assistant coach Anthony Goldwire tells PaperCity. “Because he wants to earn everything. And that’s a tribute to him growing up with his family.

“But he’s worked very hard to get back to where he was (before the knee issues). It’s totally night and day from where he was this summer. His movement and everything. Now he’s carving out a little niche.”

It is a role that Kelvin Sampson knows he needs on this team. Sampson’s never lost his belief in Isiah Harwell. This season. This Hall of Fame nominated coach is counting on what he thinks is coming.