Quentin Grimes & Jarace Walker Return to Houston to Get Better — Inside the Next Level Summer Basketball Lab Kelvin Sampson’s Quietly Built at UH

Quentin Grimes could have been in Las Vegas, hanging out at NBA Summer League like so many of his professional peers. He could have been anywhere a well paid, handsome, young athlete wants to be this summer. Which is pretty much anywhere they desire. But he chose to come back to the University of Houston, to the place where Kelvin Sampson and the best developmental basketball program in America righted his game.

Grimes comes back to hang out with his buddies still in the UH program, sure. Friends like Ryan Elvin, the former beloved 12th man turned NCAA Tournament hero turned first-year graduate assistant. Coaches like Quannas White who Grimes will tell you he’s always in contact with. But Grimes mostly comes back to work, to get back in that unique Cougar lab.

“I know this is where I get better,” Grimes tells PaperCity. “I can come back, work on my game and improve.”

Grimes knows this is a big season for him coming up in the NBA, the last year of his rookie contract. With the Dallas Mavericks trading for him in the offseason, he gets to play much closer to home — and with Luka Doncic, one of the truly unique superstars in the game. “I know Luka gets everybody a bunch of open shots,” Grimes says. “Have to knock them down. But I think they wanted me for my defense even more. Things I learned here.”

Grimes worked on in his game in UH’s facilities this summer and he had plenty of company. Top 10 NBA Draft pick Jarace Walker (Indiana Pacers), Marcus Sasser (Detroit Pistons), the reigning Big 12 Player of the Year Jamal Shead (Toronto Raptors) and DeJon Jarreau (Memphis Grizzles) also all returned for summer Coogs work. With a UH alumni team dubbed Forever Coogs playing in the $1 million TBT tourney for the first time (and winning five games before falling in the championship game Sunday), former Houston players Rob Gray, Justin Gorham, Wes Van Beck, Devin Davis, Fabian White Jr, Eric Weary Jr. and Devonta Pollard also spent a lot of time playing, practicing and working out at UH.

These former Coogs played pickup games and informal scrimmages against Kelvin Sampson’s current players, creating the kind of summer scene you get at a North Carolina, a Kentucky, a Kansas, a Duke. Blue bloods with a continuous line of pro players year after year after year. It is happening with Kelvin Sampson’s University of Houston program too.

“It just does my heart good” Kelvin Sampson tells PaperCity. “I’m just really proud of who those guys are. And their attachment to this university. They love the University of Houston.”

208 wins over the last seven seasons. Three straight seasons of at least 32 wins. A Final Four, two Elite Eights and making at least the Sweet 16 in five straight NCAA Tournaments. Earning two No. 1 seeds in March Madness. Three straight seasons finishing in the Top Two in KenPom. These are the metrics most often used to try to quantify the remarkable run Sampson’s put together at Houston.

But these summer returns, this meshing of former players who never played together, says just as much in many ways, Maybe even more.

“That goes back to being a program,” UH basketball director of external operations Lauren Sampson says. “I think a lot of schools have great teams. But when you think about the schools that are able to put together a real program, it’s that camaraderie through the years.

“It’s something that we have on our staff. (Assistant coaches) Quannas (White) and Hollis (Price) go back decades with us as former players (at Oklahoma). Quannas can look at (Oklahoma transfer) Milos (Uzan), a first year point guard, and go, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ And that’s invaluable. . . And then in the summer time you’ve got the former players coming back telling the current guys, ‘Yeah, there’s going to be hard days. But this is where you need to be.’ ”

This connection between teams present and past, with last year’s returning leading scorer LJ Cryer feeling a kinship with Sampson’s first UH star Rob Gray even though they never came close to playing together, is becoming another part of the sauce of this program.

“These were the stepping stones that we used to get to where we are today,” Emanuel Sharp, a guard on what will be a preseason Top 3 UH team this season, says. “Coach reminds us of that a lot. But grateful to those that came before us because we wouldn’t be where we are without them. And they’re great role models for us.”

From Rob Gray to Quentin Grimes, Kelvin Sampson Players Connected

A bedrock of work, of sweat equity, is one of the foundations that binds these different UH teams together. Only another Kelvin Sampson player really knows how demanding it is to play for Kelvin Sampson. Quentin Grimes returns to the Houston basketball facilities to get his summer work in because the place is built on extra work and pushing yourself to get better.

“This where they feel like they grew, where they became men,” UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “But also where they feel like they still get better. At the heart of us, is always development. And this is where they know they’re gonna get good work. They know they’re gonna develop. They know they’re going to be around family,

“And they know that they’re home.”

Kelvin Sampson makes this clear in the recruiting process. It’s part of why he connects so well with the parents of his players. “The one thing we all say to them is ‘Your ours now,’ ” Lauren Sampson says. ” ‘This doesn’t end here. You’re ours for life.’ ”

Wes Van Beck, who started his UH career as a walk-on on Kelvin Sampson’s very first Houston team, still feels that bond.

“Any time I’m in town, they welcome me with open arms,” says Van Beck, who’s built a professional basketball career playing in spots like Germany and Turkey. “I’m able to come in here and get work done and use the facility. It’s a real family environment here.

“And I’m just really grateful for not only Coach, but the Sampson family in general has really kind of taken me under their wings.”

These are ties that go beyond basketball, buzzer beaters and bounce back games. Gray calls Kelvin Sampson like “a father figure,” “a grandfather figure” to him, But he’s just as close with the other members of the Sampson family. He remembers Lauren Sampson fixing his hair before his big NCAA Tournament game against San Diego State in 2018, UH’s first NCAA tourney win in 33 years at the time.

“It’s funny,” Gray says. “Never in a million years when I was younger would I have thought I would have long hair or a man bun. But I ended up wearing that hairstyle for like four years and it kind of was a little viral moment with March Madness and the Internet and all that stuff.

“It’s just good memories. There are many good memories from my time at UH. Some funny. Some serious. . . I appreciate her doing my hair when I really didn’t have it on lock.” Gray laughs, rubs his hand over his much shorter hair these days.

“This where they feel like they grew, where they became men. But also where they feel like they still get better. At the heart of us, is always development. And this is where they know they’re gonna get good work. They know they’re gonna develop. They know they’re going to be around family.” — UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson

Spreading UH Culture Overseas

Coogs helping Coogs is what summer is all about for this program these days. For Jarace Walker, coming off something of a breakout NBA Summer League run heading into his second season with the Pacers, seeing more UH players coming into the league is something he anticipates.

“Just like the culture and how these guys play so hard at Houston,” Walker tells PaperCity. “We’re trying to bring that to the NBA. We’re trying to build up a little Houston thing in the league.”

It’s already spread beyond the NBA to other professional basketball outposts around the world too. Justin Gorham’s team won a championship last season in Lithuania, something he attributes to some Cougars attitude and effort. Something so engrained in him that he can never imagine turning his back on it.

“Overseas, sometimes we’re not held to the standards that we were at UH,” Gorham says. “So I just think that’s in the back of my mind. I just think sometimes that Coach Samps is in the corner. Just watching me. And I don’t want to disappoint him.”

This summer. Justin Gorham enjoyed hanging out with J’Wan Roberts, the sixth year graduate senior who Gorham still can remember as a wide-eyed redshirt freshman he toughened up in practice every day. Rob Gray is struck by the NBA Coogs who watch his team play in the TBT games at Fertitta.

“To look around and see Q-Grimes out there, current players — Sharp, Cryer, all those guys — Damyean Dotson in the mix, it feels great,” Gray says.

It feels like a program in full. Like a family. Like Kelvin Sampson always imagined it, long before almost anyone else saw his vision.

“Duke famously has The Brotherhood,” Lauren Sampson says. “But we’ve built our own.”

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 — bookmark this page. Follow Baldwin on the platform formerly known as Twitter here.