Kelvin Sampson’s Fantastic Four Freshmen Class Is Already Impressing at Houston — The Maturity Jumps Out

They are Kelvin Sampson’s Fantastic Four freshmen class, the highest rated recruiting class in University of Houston basketball history, the ones who have next and the now. Chris Cenac Jr., Kingston Flemings, Isiah Harwell and Bryce Jackson are different kind of freshmen in many ways. Even by the sky-high standards of Kelvin Sampson’s beyond nationally elite program.

These freshmen are not wandering into Sampson’s basketball camp and interrupting the head coach when he’s delivering a talk to ask for campus directions a la J’Wan Roberts as a freshman. They are not wildly throwing the ball every which way but to the open man like a freshman Jamal Shead, who later turned himself into the greatest point guard in school history.

These Fantastic Four guys are just different. Already primed, poised and prepared.

“They’re going to be really good,” senior wing Ramon Walker Jr. says. “They’re really mature. They’re really competitive. We played four on four the other day and there’s just a lot of competition. It’s just iron sharpening iron.

“They didn’t back down. And I didn’t expect them too.”

These are freshmen largely used to high-stakes environments. Of being expected to come up big. Cenac and Harwell are McDonald’s All-Americans who are b0th heading to USA Basketball U19 National Team Training Camp this Saturday, June 14. Flemings is the best high school player in Texas, as natural a leader as UH assistant coach Kelvin Sampson has ever been around in a lifetime of being around elite hoopers. Bryce Jackson came back from a horrific leg injury and proved he’s still the best high school player in hoops rich Houston.

Learning curve? More like learning leaps.

“These new guys have awesome examples to look to,” Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “And then the other thing that’s helped us week one (of new season summer workouts) and I think will help us throughout the year is man, we recruited Chris Cenac for two and a half years. We recruited Kingston Flemings since he was a sophomore. I remember watching Isiah Harwell when he was 15 on a 17-year-old team.

“It seems like Bryce has been around here since he was an eighth grader. A lot of our new guys have had a longstanding presence in our program.”

In an era of college basketball when entire teams flip over one season to the next, even Kelvin Sampson’s super freshmen class are long timers in a way. Chris Cenac, Kingston Flemings, Isiah Harwell and Bryce Jackson do not need to be introduced to Sampson culture. They’ve been around it for several years. They expect to be pushed. They signed up for Kelvin’s killer demands. They know the Cougars who come before them. When Kingston Flemings stays after practice to shoot some free throws and former UH Final Four star Quentin Grimes, a coveted restricted NBA free agent, shows up to work out, they share the easy banter of players who know each other.

“They’re really mature. They’re really competitive. We played four on four the other day and there’s just a lot of competition. It’s just iron sharpening iron. They didn’t back down. And I didn’t expect them too.” — UH veteran Ramon Walker on UH’s freshmen

Cenac, Flemings, Harwell and Jackson came to UH to compete. To fight. In the UH way.

“I think it’s very important,” Harwell says when I ask him about not backing down in those four on four scrimmages where fouls are called as often as a Dodo bird is sighted. “Because I feel like at some point we’re going to have to play a role on the team. So being able to show what we can do is definitely something that we need to do.

“And just being out there and being able to compete matters.”

Kelvin Sampson notes that Bryce Jackson may redshirt this season. “That may be the right thing to do for Bryce Jackson,” Sampson says. “We’ll see. They all have a chance to impress me and making winning plays.”

UH’s Top Rated Freshmen Are Determined to Win Now

No one on this Houston roster teeming with talent is playing for some future season. This is a group driven to win a national championship this season, with the memories of UH coming up one bucket short of winning a national title last season driving even the Fantastic Four freshmen. Flemings, Harwell, Jackson and Cenac lived and died with every shot and flying rebound in that 65-63 national championship game loss to Florida just like any other UH devotee.

These four more than already felt very much part of it by the time that game played out. Harwell, Jackson, Cenac and Flemings watched the national title game while trading messages in a group chat. Yes, The Fantastic Four has its own group chat.

“We were watching the last game against Florida,” Harwell says. “And all of us got on a call after and talked to each other. And we were like, ‘We need to take it one game further. We need to win it.’ ”

This is one thing Kelvin Sampson, 799 wins into a coaching career that should easily land him in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, does not have. These freshmen would have loved to see Houston reach that mountain top last season, sure. But the truth is they came here with visions of being the final pieces in Sampson and UH’s national championship moment.

That’s in play.

“To me I’m a winner,” Kingston Flemings says. “I want to come here and win a national championship. That’s my main goal. And I can get it done here for sure.”

Plenty of heavy lifting from the players who’ve come before them at UH has more than set the stage. Everyone from Galen Robinson Jr. to Chris Harris Jr. to DeJon Jarreau, Reggie Chaney, Marcus Sasser, Quentin Grimes and so many more helped create a reality where the top recruits in the country winning a national title at the University of Houston is extremely possible. Even expected by those who don’t truly understand the cruel nature of the one-and-done NCAA Tournament, a format where excellence doesn’t guarantee anything.

At this point, there are no secrets when it comes to Kelvin Sampson’s Houston program. Flemings and friends (and this natural point guard helped recruit the Fantastic Four too in some ways) knew to expect the 6 am summer workouts at the track and running the stadium steps. They already knew that Turnover Thursdays is when Sampson makes you run (a lot) every time you commit three turnovers in a session.

Flemings got two long running sessions in his first Turnover Thursday, committing six turnovers. That’s highest among these four freshmen (as a point guard Flemings handles the ball much more), but less than many good players in the past.

“I wouldn’t say anything really super surprised me,” Flemings says. “Everything I kind of anticipated has kind of happened. Some of the workouts are still hard. You can know it’s hard and you still do it — and it’s still going to be hard.”

It is one thing to know everything that is coming. And another one completely to actually go through it.

“To me I’m a winner. I want to come here and win a national championship. That’s my main goal. And I can get it done here for sure.” — UH freshman point guard Kingston Flemings

These are freshmen who want the work though. They’re embracing the intense sweat equity required in Kelvin Sampson’s program.

“He wants to win,” Cenac says of his biggest early impression of summer workout Kelvin Sampson. “We all want to win. Me coming here, I want to win. I want to help the team win. I want to get better. He wants to help me get better.”

The Fantastic Four is ready. The easy bond between them, built over the years of being recruited to UH, all the time they’ve spent texting and talking to each other, is apparent too. When there is some question whether Cenac or Flemings will be next to talk to reporters at UH’s first summer media availability, Flemings quickly shouts out, “You go first five star.”

Cenac grins. These guys already knows how this thing should go in so many ways.

No outlet covers UH basketball throughout the entire calendar year with more consistency and focus than PaperCity Houston. For more of Chris Baldwin’s extensive, detailed and unique insider coverage of UH sports — stories you cannot read anywhere else, stay tuned. Follow Baldwin on the platform formerly known as Twitter here.