Houston Makes Emphatic NCAA Tournament Seeding Point, Diving Into the Stands Up 39 Points

MEMPHIS — DeJon Jarreau clears the UConn cheerleaders on the baseline in a single bounds and lands in the first row, right amongst the paying customers. The University of Houston guard is relentlessly pursuing the basketball with the intensity of a 2 am Tinder scroller frantically searching and swiping for a match.

With his team up 39 points. With less than seven minutes remaining in a game long since decided.

Common sense might dictate that Jarreau hold off for self preservation. Sampson Sense demands otherwise.

This is how the 11th ranked team in America rolls.

Every game is played to the final buzzer, blowout no matter. Every game is a priceless opportunity, heck every second is a chance to do something worthwhile that’d better not be squandered.

Not with HIM watching, demanding, judging.

Jarreau laughs when I ask if he’d have made that full speed, Derek Jeter into the dugout style dive, in such a situation before arriving at the University of Houston. Before he started playing for HIM — Kelvin Sampson, the basketball lifer whose imprint is all over the only 30-2 team in America.

“If I was in high school, I would never do that,” Jarreau tells PaperCity. “If we was up 30, I would’ve just let ’em get the ball and got back on defense. But playing for Coach Sampson, it’s just like he always teaches you. ‘You’ve got to play the game with the same effort you start the game with no matter what the score is.’

“And he doesn’t care what the score is.”

No, he certainly doesn’t. Whether it’s the regular season, this conference tournament quarterfinal or next week’s NCAA Tournament, Sampson holds his guys to one supreme standard. The 63-year-old with one Final Four run already on his resume does not demand perfection from his team.

But he does demand never-ending effort.

In their first game in the American Athletic Conference Tournament — an event that many regard as simply a little appetizer before the big deal Big Dance starts next Thursday — Sampson’s Cougars absolutely embarrass once mighty UConn 84-45 with their supreme talent and supreme effort.

“We’re really playing for that two seed,” Jarreau says of ultimate carrot, the NCAA Tournament No. 2 seed that many of the professional bracketologists still do not give Houston much of a chance of securing.

Of course that’s before 84-45 — and the possibility of an AAC Tournament run that’s not just validating but dominating. This is the kind of statement making win that long March Madness runs spring from.

“That was like a tidal wave that hit us,” UConn coach Dan Hurley says afterwards.

This Houston team is playing its best basketball when it matters most. They follow up that historic win in Cincinnati (and four days of recharging and rehoning, there really is no four days of rest for a Kelvin Sampson team) with a 39-point beatdown of a decent Connecticut squad.

That’s not impressive. That’s a Jordan Peele Us level scariness for the rest of AAC.

UH’s Roll

The best bench in America outscores UConn’s bench 30-6. Rapidly evolving freshman Nate Hinton provides 15 of those bench points, five rebounds and three steals. UH senior point guard Galen Robinson Jr. plays the perfectly in control floor game — 16 points on 7-for-8 shooting, a game-high five assists, two steals and a plus 33 rating in 23 beyond impact minutes. Corey Davis Jr. scores 12 of his 22 points in the first 13 minutes as the Cougars set a tone that lasts all afternoon.

And Jarreau goes diving into the stands after a loose ball with his team up 39 and the clock ticking inside seven minutes.

That’s Sampson Sense.

“Defense and culture and our heart to compete, I think, is the most important thing you can teach,” Sampson says in a quiet moment in the bowels of the FedEx Forum as he waits to do a network TV interview.

Sampson’s started teaching this particular team — and it’s a strikingly different team from last year’s team, the one that came a Michigan miracle shot from advancing to the Sweet 16 — in June. And he keeps teaching it day after day after day. This is what separates Sampson from some other coaches.

He never loses faith in the teaching, never stops believing that his team can be better tomorrow than it is today.

“We’re really playing for that two seed,” DeJon Jarreau says of ultimate carrot, an NCAA Tournament No. 2 seed.

Now, this 30-2 team — the first 30-win Houston team since the days of Phi Slama Jama — gets Memphis in the conference semifinals Saturday afternoon. Memphis took out UCF — one of the only two teams to beat UH this season — which normally would be considered a good thing for Houston. Until one considers that the Tigers are 17-2 this season at the FedEx Forum, the arena they share with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzles.

Of course, these Cougars are likely to use this as more fuel.

“If I had to find a way to describe it,” Davis says of Houston’s mindset, “it would be ‘desperate.’ I mean we have to have a sense of desperation. This is us playing to our culture. We treat every team the same and we play our hearts out.”

This is how the team that’s already locked into a high NCAA Tournament seed still outworks teams that are playing for their tournament lives.

That’s Sampson Sense.

Kelvin Sampson’s March Magic

Sampson is clearly comfortable on this stage. Let the attention build and build. He’s got Hitch references for you. Yes, the Will Smith and Kevin Smith romantic comedy/buddy movie that came out in 2005. Houston’s coach compares Robinson, his point guard, to the guy who can’t dance in the movie and knows to stay in his lane.

This little pop culture drop has Davis quietly cracking up to the side of Sampson on the AAC interview podium. While the reference completely works (Robinson is the point guard who doesn’t try to do what he can’t and excels at what he can), it is also from a movie that hit theaters when Davis was 7 years old.

Yes, Kelvin Sampson keeps it real. In his own very unique way. And his players clearly can’t get enough of this stuff.

This is how you get guys diving into the stands when you’re up almost 40 points. This is how you roll in March.

Sampson Sense. Develop it — and you might just never stop flying in March.

“That’s a pack of wolves,” Hurley says after 84-45, the UConn coach looking like someone blew his brick house down. “Those guys, that is a pack of wolves. I thought one through 10, no let up.

“I mean they play with incredible, confidence, toughness, intensity and joy… that is a Final Four caliber team.”

That’s Sampson Sense. Coming to a March game near you.