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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: WICHITAMarch 14, 2018Kelvin SampsonWichita, Kansas THE MODERATOR: We're going to begin our session with Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson, in his fourth season, first appearance for the Cougars in the NCAA since 2010. Coach, welcome to Wichita, and your assessment of your opponent tomorrow. COACH SAMPSON: First of all, San Diego State is -- after watching them, I'm not sure -- I don't know what their strength and weakness is. I think their strength is they don't have any weaknesses. There's not one area, I've watched them I say, well, we can exploit this for sure. They've got big, strong, physical guards. I keep hearing about how physical we are. Our guards are six foot, six foot, six foot. Theirs are six-four, 220 and one's six-five, 230. I don't get that. So they got a really big back court. That causes problems. Big back courts have caused us problems all year. Cincinnati it was six-six and six-six on the wing. Wichita State was six-six and six-seven. Teams with big wings have caused problems for us. And then go inside. Those are usually rock fights. But San Diego State is very talented. Pope and McDaniel, we don't have guys like that, we don't have guys like that in our league. Probably the best inside player in our league is Morris from Wichita State. Best overall player may be Clark from Cincinnati. I think Morris is probably about six-eight. Clark's about six-seven. So we haven't seen this kind of length this year. Probably the team that had that kind of length that we played against was probably Wake Forest maybe, Providence. Providence was big. Wake Forest had a couple of seven-footers. So San Diego State is very good. Brian Dutcher does a great job of coaching his team. They're well coached and very disciplined. Good guards, good front line. Good team. There's a reason they've won nine in a row. Q. Just listening to you, it sounds like you're the 11 seed and they're the 6 seed. Do you guys have a chance tomorrow -- COACH SAMPSON: I think that seeding stuff, you can put that in a bag and throw it in the ocean. What does that mean? How do they know how to seed? If you look at the two teams, we are the 11 seed. If you look at their players, look at ours. We're six foot, six foot, six foot, six-five. I just like their roster. They've done a really nice job of putting their team together. They've got a two-headed point guard that's really good. Watson and Hemsley complement each other well, so they don't take a dip when they go to the bench. I think that's what really good teams do is they have depth. They have seven or eight starters. So Hemsley and Watson are really good at the point. Kell is a great closer. He's one of those guys that can get the ball to Pope, Mitchell, McDaniel throughout the game, and then all of a sudden the last five minutes he wins it for you. It's nice to have a guy like that. But I've never been concerned. You don't know what you don't know. But people that take stock in seeding, you're a higher seed and they're the lower seed. After the 1 seeds and 2 seeds, everybody's about the same as far as I'm concerned. Three seeds, there's some 3 seeds that could be two seeds. But once you get from 4 to about 13, I think it's -- and everybody talks about parity and all of a sudden we get to the tournament and you forget parity and start talking about seeds. What happened to parity? Q. Coach, at least program-wide San Diego State's had this national reputation as a defensive team, defensive minded. That's how they stayed in games, that's how they limited opponents. This team seems to be breaking out of that mold a little bit offensively with more options. Is that accurate in your mind or what do you see about them offensively? COACH SAMPSON: Are you from San Diego? Q. Yeah? COACH SAMPSON: You know way more about that than I do. I've never seen them before. I've never seen them play except on film. How many times have you seen them this year. Q. Five. COACH SAMPSON: Answer your own question. What do you think? Q. I'm just curious through the film the last couple of days -- COACH SAMPSON: I mean, I wouldn't know. I've never seen them in person. So, you know, I have to read about them and look on film. So I don't know that I'm qualified to answer the question. But after reading and catching up on them, it sounds like they struggled early because of Kell being out with injuries. You know, and I think about if Rob Gray was out with injuries for us, I mean, we'd struggle, too. But I think I go back to my -- I would answer that question I guess with my initial thought about them. I don't think they have a weakness. I think they're really good offensively. Because Brian can go different ways. When you can post your guards up against other six-three, six-four guards, I'm sure his eyelids was blinking when he saw our guards. They post up six-three, six-four guys. I mean, we're going to run six foot guys out there. They're going -- I'm sure their kids saw our film and said, it's going to be fun. Q. Kelvin, the guys back in the locker room just talking with them saying, look, we learned from what happened in that conference tournament. How do they take that what happened -- COACH SAMPSON: Learned what? Learned from what? Beating Wichita State? Q. Beating Wichita State and a tough loss to Cincinnati. They said that's something they can build upon. They learned the things they did good, the things they did bad? COACH SAMPSON: No, I don't think they learned. I mean, we played 33 games. This is our 34th game. I think our kids are no different than Kansas kids or Pennsylvania's kids or San Diego State's kids. This is our next game. You've gotta flush the last one, let it go and get on to the next one. We played Sunday afternoon. So short turnaround for us. Three games in three days from Monday. We left yesterday. We're here today. We don't have a new offensive to put in. We don't have a new defense to put in. We take our system and put it against San Diego State's system. I think this game's 50/50. I think if -- I think we can beat San Diego State, but I think San Diego State can beat us too. I think it's that kind of game. Gotta play good. If we play good, we'll have a good chance. If they play good, that means we're probably not going to play good and they're going to have a good chance. Does that clear anything up for you? Q. Totally clear now. The other thing they want to do is make history for U of H basketball. UH hasn't won a tournament game since '84, and they're well aware of that. COACH SAMPSON: It's hard to win a game when you haven't been in a tournament. So I think we need to start there. How many times have we been in a tournament since '80 -- what year did you say? Q. '84 they won. COACH SAMPSON: So they haven't won a game since '84. How many chances have they had? Q. Five. COACH SAMPSON: So they're -- what are they, 0 for 5? Q. Four. COACH SAMPSON: So they've had four chances. Yeah. So they've had four chances. I mean, I don't know what the question is. Q. Just that the guys know the history and they would like to make history by getting a win. COACH SAMPSON: Yeah. I'm sure they would if you ask them, but that's not something we ever talk about or even think about. I was really proud of our kids. You know, when that U of H went up on the board Sunday, that logo, interlocking U and interlocking H, that's a proud day, you know, when you're -- because I remember where we were in 2014. San Diego State's got a great history. You know, Steve Fisher, who's a very good friend of mine, I've known Steve for 30 years, I know what Steve did at San Diego State, and Brian was sitting right there with him all those years. So that program is established. They've been really good for a long, long, long time, whereas we're kind of a latecomer to the party. You know, three years ago we went 13 and 19, and that was a great year. That team could have went a lot worse than 13 and 19. Then the next year we got a little bit better. The next year pretty good again, and then this year. So we're kind of three years into this thing, and here we are in the tournament. So we're happy about that. And I think our best days are ahead of us, too. So I thought our first year would be our worst year while we were at Houston. But I don't think this will be our best year. I think our best years are going to be ahead of us. Whereas with San Diego State, I've always watched Steve's teams play. I just was always amazed at their length and athleticism. I know how good quite Kawhi Leonard was, and Kawhi Leonard, it's not like he stood out on that team. That was a really good team. There was a lot of good players on that team. And it's like the team they have now, you can tell how good they're going to be in the future because they're freshmen. This McDaniels kid is special now. He's not going to be 210 pounds forever. And that Mitchell kid, that boy is a load. He's a good player. So I think you got two programs that it's going to continue to get better. They're established. We're not. We're still fighting to get there. We need to continue to win and continue to be consistent, whereas San Diego State has been like that. But we have kids in this program, this is their first year at Houston, and they're in the NCAA Tournament. So when you start talking history to them, they don't know what you're talking about. Q. So at least in recent years this hasn't been a program that's had the players that are deemed five stars or McDonald's All-Americans, but I'm curious as you've gone out and grabbed guys from the junior college ranks or other places, there's things you can teach, but is there a trait that you look at a recruit and say I can work with this, this is a guy that could fit what I want to do? COACH SAMPSON: Well, you talk about five star, who in our conference does? I mean, nobody in our conference has five stars, except for maybe Connecticut. They have five stars. And we talk about junior college kids, we have as many high school kids as we do junior college kids. Fabian White was on the All Freshman team this year. Galen Robinson was on the All Freshman team two years ago. Rob Gray may have been a junior college kid, but Rob was a qualifier, was a 3.3 student in junior college and had three years' eligibility. So I've had him for three years, not two. Chris Harris came from a junior college, and same thing academically. He's got three years. So we have a lot of kids here three and four years. It's not -- sometimes you have to put things in proper context. We're not a junior college program. We have some really good junior college players, though. So what was your question? Q. When you're assembling those guys, or just in general recruiting, is there something that you look at and you see a trait that -- other things you may be able to teach, but is there a trait that you look at that you say I can work with that or that's something that'll fit my program? COACH SAMPSON: Yeah. I think you guys -- I just walked into the tail end of Devin and Rob's press conference. I think you can tell the intelligence level of both of those kids. Those are smart kids. I like smart kids. It's hard to play this game if you can't think. It really is. Defense is about instinct, reaction, and basketball IQ. You know, I can teach a lot of things, but I cannot teach instinct and I cannot teach IQ. I can't. Can't teach size either. But if you're coachable, if you have the ability to react and make multiple decisions in a short amount of time, you know, talent is always there. That's number one. You recruit good players. We all try to recruit good players. But I like to recruit smart kids. You know, Devin's a very smart kid. Rob was one of those kids that he graduated in December, but he could have graduated last December. He's extremely, extremely bright kid. I have four seniors, two of them have already graduated. The other two are taking single-digit credits to get their degree in May. Every kid in our program is on track to graduate from Houston, and they're all good students. They would graduate from anybody's college. So for me, I look at instinct. If a kid's on a three and one break, does he make the right decision. When the shot goes up and he's -- does he block out or does he go after the ball, and is he pretty good at either one. I also like to recruit kids that come from good coaches, winning programs. Good coaches are usually good teachers. They teach kids -- they come in advanced. Devin played his freshman -- he played at Indiana. Came from a really good high school program, outstanding, outstanding junior college coach at Odessa. Tra Arnold is an outstanding coach. Rob played for one of the best junior college coaches in the nation, Scott Raynes, at Howard, excellent coach. Scott Raynes would be a good coach anywhere. So I just think kids that are smart, kids that are tough, we can help them with the toughness. As long as they're not too far back, you know, we can help them. I've had some that, you know, it's hard to help -- hard to help them all. San Diego State's got a tough team, though. I like their toughness. THE MODERATOR: That's going to conclude today's session. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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