NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL SEMIFINAL - HOUSTON VS ARIZONA

March 24, 2022

Jamal Shead

Kyler Edwards

Kelvin Sampson

AT&T Center

Houston Cougars

Sweet 16 Postgame Media Conference

Houston - 72, Arizona - 60

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson. Houston student-athletes Jamal Shead and Kyler Edwards.

Q. Kelvin, you've talked about just Jamal's confidence all year, and it seemed like it was at an all time high tonight. Can you talk about what he means to this team and coming into a big time game like tonight and doing what he did?

KELVIN SAMPSON: He's been doing that -- he's kind of thrust into a major role early. He just had to get better. Jamal was 17 years old when he got to campus, so because of COVID he's really a 19-year-old freshman. So he just had to grow with our team.

We got thrown a curveball. We don't need to talk about that anymore, but we got thrown a curveball in late December, early January, and we just had to go and figure out who's going to do what.

I think early in the conference season he struggled, but so did we, but we found ways to win. I think we started our conference off 9-0, but at no point in time in that 9-0 did I think we were as good as we could be. We just had to kind of just hitting the rock.

But when Jamal started growing -- like most freshmen, he's up and he's down, he's up and he's down. I thought having Kyler beside him, I thought was really important for him on the floor. Kyler is a veteran. He's a senior, true senior. Taze being an older guy, Fabian being at Houston for a while and having played in a Final Four last year.

You know, he has some older guys around him to help nurture him. That was important. Then once he found his way, he got his wings, he started flying.

When we recruited Jamal, I thought he had great leadership skills, extremely, extremely intelligent kid. He's one of those kids that should be an A student, I mean straight A student. There's not one subject, whether it's math, biology, chemistry, he's a really, really good academician, but he's also tough.

I can't say enough about Qannas White, my assistant coach, the job he's done developing his shot because, when he came here, he was a non-shooter. Just because you can make a shot doesn't mean you're a good shooter. Kyler was a good shooter, but Jamal was not. Coach Q did a great job. He did it last year with Quentin Grimes, and he did it this year with Taze and Jamal.

Jamal has grown up, and this team has grown up with him.

Q. Kelvin, we always ask you about how tough your team plays, and that's a trademark of what you've done for years. How much did toughness play into a game like this where you're racking up fouls, some of your starters have three fouls, and the game gets tight, and you guys as a team find a way to win this? Really dig in defensively to create offense.

KELVIN SAMPSON: We just talked about that in the locker room. We were a long way from being anything -- I thought tonight we were solid. We weren't good or really good. We were just -- the guy that's been really good for us, Taze Moore, was a non-factor. He had 21 against Illinois. Tonight he's in the witness protection program. I couldn't find him nowhere.

We put him in there, and we had to take him right back out. Ramon Walker, now, he's a true freshman. I think he's still only 18. So he had to play more minutes than we would have liked.

But you know, good, bad, or indifferent, every team is known for something. All our teams eventually get there. It's not always smooth sailing, we're not going to win a lot of beauty contests, but victories don't come with asterisks. It's not a beauty contest.

I watched Arizona play. I watched them play UCLA. I watched them play Colorado. I watched the way those teams guarded them, and I knew we weren't going to guard them like those teams did. Those teams just switched them. They let them be comfortable. I knew we were going to make them uncomfortable. That's what we do.

I knew their size would be a factor, but I didn't think their size was -- if we did what our game plan called for, I didn't think the size was going to make us lose. Our team, we're a tough bunch. We've gotten a lot better as the season goes on.

But all the credit goes to these kids. I can do what I want. Coach doesn't win games, players do. I'm really proud of this bunch. They bought into the game plan tonight, and they're not afraid of anybody. Whether it's UAB or Illinois, Arizona. Our next game is Villanova. We'll just move on to that one, and we'll do the best we can with that one.

Q. Coach or the players, you kind of had a sense playing here that you would get a pretty good backing. How much did you guys just feed off the energy in this building once you guys started playing in your game the way you wanted to dictate the pace of this one?

KYLER EDWARDS: Coach likes to call us (indiscernible) because we're right here next to Houston. We liked how the crowd showed up today. They brought all the energy today. They really helped us.

JAMAL SHEAD: The energy was just electric. It was awesome to have that type of crowd here. We're going deep in the playoffs, but it was just electric out here.

KELVIN SAMPSON: In the last round Arizona beat TCU, and you could tell their crowd. I've coached against Arizona a lot of years. Really, really good friend. There's nobody I respect more in coaching than Lute Olson. It's hard for me to think of Lute without thinking of Bobby. I know what those Arizona fans are like. Everybody tells us about East Coast, West Coast, there is an East Coast bias. A lot of coaches won't say it, but I will.

People have no idea how hard it is to win at the McKale Center. I should know. I've never won there. But that's because they've been so good. But you look at that TCU game, that Arizona crowd had a lot to do with raising their kids' level of play, and I knew the Arizona fans would show up tonight because they're great fans. They have a great program.

But I was proud of our fans tonight. Our fans are learning, learning how. They had no idea when we started winning. They didn't understand what winning was. We had to teach them, and now they're starting to catch on a little bit. Proud of them.

Q. Kelvin, Arizona is one of the fastest, most free flowing offenses in the country. I know part of your MO is, like you said, to make teams uncomfortable. Was there anything you focused on in the game plan to kind of take them out of the rhythm?

KELVIN SAMPSON: Well, we play -- the key to beating Arizona is controlling the pace. We felt like, if we could hold them in the 50s and we don't turn the ball over at the end, we probably do hold them in the 50s. But 60, we're going to win a game in the 60s, but we're not going to win the game in the 80s. If the game's in the 80s, then they're doing what they practice. If the game's in the 50s and 60s, that means our defense is really good.

We led our league in scoring. We're number ten offensive team in the country. It's not like we don't have a good offense. It's that when you play a team like Illinois who likes to run or Arizona who likes to run, Memphis likes to run, those are three really good teams. But in order for us to beat them, we have to figure out how we're going to win the game.

So we're physical. The start of the first half, the start of the second half, you can tell the adjustment that Tommy made with those slip screens and the quick rolls and they were getting them, and we just turned around and said, okay, if you're going to do that, then we're going to do this. Instead of chasing them over the screen, we went under the screen, and that completely took the roller away.

What Arizona is good at is the roll, and then Tubelis is such a good passer. But by going under the screen, we took his passing away, and we forced him to be a scorer. So part of our game plan is we wanted Tubelis to have to score the ball and not pass it. We kept him in check the first half. Second half they started, instead of setting the screen -- we call them ghost or burn screens. They ghost, and they were hitting the pocket pass, and they were hitting us -- they got us a couple times.

Then we came back and said, okay, here's how we're going to guard that. Once our kids started going under those screens, now we kept the ball in front of us. So our pick-and-roll coverage was good. On the sides, Mathurin hit some tough shots, but those were tough shots.

And as good an offensive rebounding team as we are, and we're really good, I thought Arizona was better. I thought Arizona was a better offensive rebounding team than us tonight. I thought that was their best offense, their offensive rebounding. They're good at that.

Q. Kyler and Jamal, you just heard Coach say that you're not afraid of anybody. Kyler, we talked to you yesterday, and you said you guys kind of feel like underdogs and have since December. You never trailed against the Number 1 seed. What did the flow of the game feel like, and what kind of statement did you guys make out there?

JAMAL SHEAD: You know, just our attitude towards the game. Once we come out of the locker room, we feel like we're supposed to be here at all times. We always feel like the toughest team out there and always try to play like it.

We always have each other's back, and I think that's the most important thing there. We can't be scared of anybody if we all are together and just trying to go at it all the time.

KYLER EDWARDS: I say we try to control their runs as best we could. The best thing they did watching the game was fast breaks, and they only had 9 fast break points. Credit to the coaches getting us ready for this game, and just being together and being the toughest team pulled us through.