Creating LJ Cryer — How a Football Family and Kelvin Sampson’s Houston Program Have Transformed the Talented Baylor Transfer

LJ Cryer used to practice shooting in his living room, no basketball hoop in sight. He would lie down on the floor on his back and shoot the ball, trying to make sure it went straight up and down every time. His dad also put a little device on his arm, geared to make sure his elbow stayed straight while he shot.

“Growing up, my dad focused a lot on shooting,” Cryer shares.

Lionel Cryer had a plan — and some expert advice. Cryer enlisted the help of John Lucas II, the former longtime NBA player turned coaching guru, for guidance on how to best teach his son shooting. “Coach Lucas used to always tell me, ‘Make sure he starts shooting that ball with the elbow in,’ ” Lionel Cryer tells PaperCity. “When you’re small, you usually shoot that ball from your hip. And Lucas told me that if LJ was going to be a really good shooter, he had to learn to get his elbow in from the get up.

“And that’s all we worked on.”

That work continues to pay off for Cryer and No. 2 Houston heading into the Cougars’ 11 am Saturday national TV CBS showdown at Baylor, which just happens to be Cryer’s old school. Cryer is one of the best shooters in all of college basketball, the leading scorer on 23-3 national championship contender who may just be getting started.

“LJ might be — no mark on Marcus (Sasser) — but LJ might be the best shooter I’ve ever played with or seen,” University of Houston guard Emanuel Sharp, a pretty elite level shooter himself, says. “They’re both great. But I just think L off the catch, just in workouts, he doesn’t miss a lot.

“I hate working out with him because I barely get any reps when I’m working out with him because he’s taking all the shots. But nah. L’s, a great shooter.”

One who UH coach Kelvin Sampson and lifeline point guard Jamal Shead often urge to shoot more. Cryer drops 26 points on Texas, taking only 13 shots. He scores 18 straight points at Allen Fieldhouse just when Kansas thinks it’s about to blow out a Houston team that plays too hard and too fiercely to ever really get blown out. When LJ Cryer is rolling, scoring as naturally as water runs downstream, the entire ceiling for this already talented and tough Houston team rises to another higher level.

“We need him to do that,” UH associate head coach Quannas White tells PaperCity. “It just helps the whole team when he’s being aggressive offensively. He’s shown that he can be one of the best two ways guards in the country. His defense has really improved.

“And when he’s got it going, he’s one of the best scorers in the country. Not just one of the best shooters. He’s one of the best scorers in the country.”

Just like Lionel Cryer envisioned it. LJ Cryer started dribbling a basketball at age 4 and his dad always wanted to make sure he’d learn the game right way. “I think at 4 years old, I drew his hand on a basketball,” Lionel Cryer details. “A little bitty basketball. That’s like one of the first things we worked on.”

Lionel Cryer can still picture that little yellow basketball that gave one of college basketball’s best scorers his start.

A Family of Athletes

It turns out that creating a great shooter can take an athletic village. To say LJ Cryer grew up in an athletic family is like saying that Kim Kardashian grew up in an eccentric one. It’s downplaying it a whole lot. Lionel Cryer made Grambling State’s Hall of Fame as a linebacker who played for legendary coach Eddie Robinson. LJ Cryer’s mom Tamica starred in volleyball at the school. His little brother Justin Cryer, better known as Juice, is a linebacker on Florida State’s football team.

If you want to play in the Cryers’ holiday pickup football game, you’d better bring some talent. And probably some shoulder pads.

“My brother played football,” Lionel Cryer says. “A cousin played at Nebraska. It’s a football family.”

LJ Cryer played football too. Shead and he like to debate over who was the better defensive back. Cryer also played some quarterback.

“The high school coaches would come and watch him throw the football,” Lionel Cryer says of his son’s junior high days. But football never really had a chance of grabbing this talent. Basketball’s hold trumped all.

“It didn’t really matter because he’d go to school, sixth grade, dribbling the basketball,” Lionel Cryer says. “He was still playing football, but he’d dribble the basketball to school every day.” In eighth grade, LJ Cryer told his parents that he’d decided he wanted to concentrate on basketball. Of course, the beating the Cryers’ kitchen floor took from LJ dribbling a basketball on it over the years provided plenty of clues this was coming.

The athleticism of Lionel Cryer’s son is somewhat underrated. When LJ tried playing tennis in junior high school, he won a district title. When he decided to do the long jump for one year, he won a district title in that too.

“I think at 4 years old, I drew his hand on a basketball. A little bitty basketball. That’s like one of the first things we worked on.” — Lionel Cryer, LJ Cryer’s dad

Now listed at 6-foot-1, LJ Cryer does not jump out as physically imposing player. He’s a little slight by design, a shorter Richard Hamilton-skinny type who can run defenders off screens all day long. Cryer’s game is built around his ability to get to spots quickly, to find little openings where he can get a shot up in an instant. When Cryer gets wide open in the half court, it’s not because teams like Texas aren’t focused on guarding him (every Houston opponent builds their defensive game plan around trying to limit Cryer’s good looks).

No, Cryer gets open because he can be as slippery as personal injury lawyer. He goes one way, then darts another. Sometimes before his defender even realizes he’s gone. Saul Goodman would love LJ Cryer’s escapability.

“Any time the ball comes off his hand, the entire coaching staff believes it’s going in,” White says of Cryer. “That’s every time. That’s the kind of shooter he is.”

LJ Cryer, The Houston Transformation

Cryer scores almost as naturally as most of us breathe. He set Baylor’s all-time single game NCAA Tournament scoring record by dropping 30 points on Creighton last March. That’s all good, but Cryer transferred to Houston because he wants to be more than a scorer. He knows he needs to be more to have a chance to make it in the NBA. He’s become a dedicated defender in Kelvin Sampson’s program, made sure he’s not a weak link in the No. 1 ranked defense in America. Maybe the best defense Kelvin Sampson has ever had.

“I give LJ credit for his attitude towards that,” Sampson says when I ask about Cryer’s defensive transformation. “He knew that was an area he needed to get better at. And he’s been really good at that. He hasn’t been perfect. He’s had some glitches along the way. But I’ve been pleased with LJ’s attitude and effort. And that’s where playing defense starts.”

This is type of defensive development — in a UH program that’s built around developing players — is why the Cryers felt leaving Baylor for Houston would benefit their son.

“Coach Sampson told us what he thought LJ needed to go to the next level,” Lionel Cryer tells PaperCity. “Be a little bit more tougher. And be able to defend. And by coming here, all that has happened for him. He’s defending well.”

As for the toughness aspect? Lionel Cryer never doubted his son there. This is a kid who insisted on playing in a junior high school basketball game with a broken toe.

“We knew it was broken, but he wanted to play,” Lionel Cryer says. “He played the game and the next day he had to get a cast put on it.”

“He’s one of the best scorers in the country. Not just one of the best shooters. He’s one of the best scorers in the country.” — UH associate head coach Quannas White on LJ Cryer

Now Cryer wants to make sure this Houston team is still playing on April 8 in the national championship game in Glendale, Arizona’s spaceship looking stadium. Cryer has a chance to become the first college basketball player to ever win a national title at two different schools (he was a bench player on the 2021 Baylor team that won it all, beating UH in the Final Four along the way).

To make that happen, Cryer will need to have more games in the zone, where he feels like every single shot he takes is going in. Cryer has become better at keeping his shooting legs while playing with the defensive effort that Sampson requires as the season’s gone. That’s been an adjustment made. He and his teammates figure the best is still to come.

“When I feel like I’m in a good groove, I feel like every shot I take is going to go in,” LJ Cryer tells PaperCity. “Second half vs. Kansas, I feel like I hit one of those grooves. And I’ve just got to find a way to get in those grooves more often.”

As for those days of lying on the floor and shooting a basketball straight up in the air as kid?

“Honestly, I have no idea where my dad got some of that stuff,” Cryer laughs. “But I figured he knew what he was doing.”