How Strong Women Made JoJo Tugler, College Basketball’s True Unicorn — Houston’s Unique Force Doesn’t Need to Score to Completely Change Games

JoJo Tugler’s endlessly long arms rise above the top of the square on the basketball backboard often enough that it’s almost become routine. The University of Houston sophomore forward is one of the true unicorns in college basketball today, a shot blocking, lane closing, intimidating, offensive rebounding force who changes games without even needing to score. Watch this 6-foot-8 teenager with a 7-foot-6 and 1/2 wingspan reach high above the rim and basketball’s very geometry can seem to change.

Sometimes Tugler’s long arms get so high above the basket that the pictures make you give a double take. They almost seem altered. But they’re just reality JoJo-ed

The 19-year-old Tugler isn’t bound by the usual dimensions of the game. He jumps high and stretches his retractable arms even higher. Plays fearlessly. Still. Which amazes the older sisters who helped Tugler become the player he is today. For they know what he went through last season when a broken foot slammed his increasingly promising and beyond impactful freshman season to a screeching halt. They know that he now has surgical screws in that right foot to help hold the bones in place.

Yet JoJo Tulger is still JoJo Tugler in every way, coming right at anyone in his way.

“It really shocked me,” his older sister Elexar Tugler says. “Because he playing hard like he ain’t have no injury. And he got screws.”

Tugler found sitting out so painful that the screws barely even register. He is treating the injury like an annoying interruption rather than a setback to overcome.

“I don’t even want to think about no injury,” Tugler tells PaperCity. “I want to finish out this season strong. All season. Strong.”

JoJo Tugler’s always played with a fearlessness that can knock less confident opponents back. He gives no quarter, never lets up. Talk to his mom Brenda Tugler, a former hooper herself, and it quickly becomes apparent where he gets this attitude from. Brenda Tugler’s advice to her son after he broke his foot, something he played a few games through first without realizing how badly it was hurt, turned out to be simple. And direct.

“Telling him to work with it because he needed to get back out there,” Brenda Tugler says of what she told JoJo. ” ‘Don’t let your foot give you up. Because you ain’t got no broken fingers.’ That foot can get fixed.”

JoJo Tugler is JoJo Tugler because of the household of strong women he was raised in. Tugler used to follow his older twin sisters Alexar and Elexar to the basketball court at the end of the yard. At first, he’d struggle to hold his own. But JoJo never stopped coming. Like usual.

“Oh, he used to be at all our games,” Alexar Tugler says. “He’d watch us, try to get into the game. We played against him 24-7.”

“I guess we kind of motivated him,” Elexar Tugler says. “It’s in his genes. But he couldn’t wait to get to this level. He love it. He really love it.”

In an American basketball world of today that revolves around kids playing more organized games than ever, with adults always around and personalized coaching ever present, JoJo Tugler is something of an anomaly. He didn’t grow up in any AAU system as much as he grew up on the blacktop, finding his own ways to compete.

“Jo’s probably worked out with an individual skills trainer the least amount of anybody on our team,” UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “And he’s probably the one guy on our team who’s played the most on blacktop. He’s played a lot of Twenty-One and one-on-0ne.

“Jo is a hooper more so than a byproduct of a skills laboratory.”

“It’s his gift. Sometimes the worst thing I could try to do with Jo as his coach is try to coach every step he makes. Because he’s going to make 10 wrong steps and the play’s going to end up being beautiful.” — UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson

Brenda Tugler, a former high school track and basketball standout, still considers herself a street ball player at heart. And that’s how she raised her two girls and JoJo. “Just go and play ball,” Brenda Tugler says. “Because me? I played like I played street ball.”

Brenda Tugler’s wingspan is almost as impressive as her son’s. It measures in at 6-foot-7 from extended arm to extended arm. Kellen Sampson asked her if he could measure it on JoJo’s recruiting visit. JoJo Tugler’s mom and his sisters gave him another priceless gift too — the ability to improvise on the court. A freedom to his game that so many more robotic players lack. Watching JoJ0 Tugler fly around a basketball court is like watching a great jazz riff played by a charging rhino. You never quite know where it’s going, but you can’t take your eyes off it.

“It’s the timing that he plays with,” Kellen Sampson says. “It’s the instinct of knowing when to use it and how to use it. There’s a lot of guys that are track athletes, but they don’t know how to play basketball. Jo is a hooper. Everything makes sense once the game gets going five on five for him.”

“He’s just a great teammate. He could care less about stats.” — Kelvin Sampson on JoJo Tugler

Letting JoJo Be JoJo

To the credit of this deep and talented University of Houston basketball coaching staff, they embrace letting JoJo Tugler play free. There are non-negotiable defensive principles he needs to follow of course, this is a Kelvin Sampson coached team. But Kelvin Sampson and Kellen Sampson, who works with the forwards every day, in particular embrace Tugler’s unconventional on-court genius. It’s easy to sense how much they get a kick out of it.

Not everyone gets t0 coach college basketball’s most unique player. And not everyone could.

“It’s his gift,” Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “Sometimes the worst thing I could try to do with Jo as his coach is try to coach every step he makes. Because he’s going to make 10 wrong steps and the play’s going to end up being beautiful. Right? Sometimes you’ve just kind of got to let Jo go and you’re probably going to like the result.

“If I try to start and over coach some or all of that, I’m going to take away the essence of him. You’ve just got to tell the other guys, ‘Don’t look at how Jo’s doing it.’ Don’t try to copy Jo. You can’t try to copy Jo.”

JoJo Tugler’s twin older sisters played as a guard tandem at the University of Louisiana Monroe, near where all the Tugler kids were born. Alexar and Elexar played free too, but they’ll both tell you that no one plays quite like JoJo. Few people are as confident in their own skin as JoJo Tugler. That’s part of the gift of being raised by all those strong women too.

“My mamma, my sises, my aunties, they all had my back,” JoJo Tugler says.

The result is a one of a kind player who isn’t obsessed with scoring. Tugler is averaging 5.7 points per game through three games and has more impact on the actual game outcomes than many players averaging three or four times that many points.

“He missed three dunks tonight and four free throws and all he knows was his team won by whatever we did,” Kelvin Sampson says after Houston’s 91-45 wipeout of Louisiana, a game in which Tugler finished a plus 24. “He was happy for Terrance Arceneaux. He’s just a great teammate. He could care less about stats.”

Kelvin Sampson’s team is entering a stretch of games that could make JoJo Tugler’s unique skills jump out to more than just the most devoted college basketball observers. The No. 7 Cougars host a Hofstra team that beat Big East Seton Hall earlier this season on Friday night at Fertitta Center before heading to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival where it will play No. 8 Alabama, a fellow national championship contender, on Tuesday night and undefeated Notre Dame Wednesday night. These are the type of games where JoJo Tugler’s skills are amplified, the type of games that any real hooper dreams of.

“If you need to find Jo, he’s one of three places,” Kellen Sampson says. “His mom’s house, his apartment or Guy V. Lewis (developmental facility). He is really kind of a simple guy. He’s coming in like ‘This is how I play basketball.’ I don’t think he’s ever thought about trying to change a play style. I don’t think it even registers with him, ‘Ah man, I need to be a little more. . .’

May JoJo Tugler never change. He’s a one of a kind college basketball force, one forged by strong women and an ability to alter the geometry of the game.

“I love watching him play,” Elexar Tugler says. “It’s very exciting. I love it. I’m really rooting for him. I’m ready to see the future. And I know he got it in him.”

“He gets better every day,” Alexar Tugler says.

There is only one JoJo Tugler. And UH and college basketball are better for it.

No outlet covers University of Houston basketball throughout the entire calendar year with more consistency and focus than PaperCity Houston. Without any subscription fees or paywalls. Ever. For more of Chris Baldwin’s extensive, detailed and unique insider coverage of UH sports — stories you cannot read anywhere else — bookmark this page. Follow Baldwin on the platform formerly known as Twitter here.