NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL FINAL - HOUSTON VS VILLANOVA

March 25, 2022

Jamal Shead

Kyler Edwards

Josh Carlton

Fabian White Jr.

Taze Moore

Kelvin Sampson

AT&T Center

Houston Cougars

Elite 8 Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We're about to be joined by Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson. Houston student-athletes Jamal Shead, Kyler Edwards, Josh Carlton, Fabian White Jr., and Taze Moore. We'll get going with Coach's opening statement.

KELVIN SAMPSON: It's an honor to keep moving on. I think we all understand how difficult it is to make the tournament. I never lose sight of how difficult it is to win a game.

Keeping your kids grounded, staying in the moment. Probably our best player, one of our best players in the game before was Taze Moore. Last night he got in foul trouble and wasn't really -- didn't make an impact on the game at all. It just shows you how difficult from game to game. So you just have to -- don't get ahead of yourself. Every game is kind of like a box. It has no bearing on the game before, and it has no bearing on the game after. You just have to stay in the moment.

In preparing for the last game, you have multiple days to get ready. For the second game, you have one day. So you try not to overload them with information. We know what we do, and we try to do it to the best of our ability. Villanova is one of those great brands in college basketball and has been for a generation.

I remember back to Rollie Massimino and Ed Pinckney and that group all the way through to Jay. Villanova is one of those iconic names in college basketball. I'm proud to be playing them and hope to move on.

Q. For Josh and Jamal and Taze, when you get so -- when you're so close to the Final Four, does the moment seem even bigger and how do you guard against making it too big?

JOSH CARLTON: Really just focus one game at a time. There is no Final Four unless you go out and play well in the Elite Eight. Focus on playing against Nova, a tough opponent, disciplined, respected coach. Go out there and try to win the game Saturday.

JAMAL SHEAD: Like Josh said, just taking it one game at a time. There is no Final Four if we don't win tomorrow. We want to focus on Villanova and focus on our game plan and try to stick to it.

TAZE MOORE: I agree with what those guys said. Just stay on the course and try to figure out what we're doing in the Elite Eight before we get to the Final Four.

Q. Jamal, after last night's game, Coach talked about how Qannas White has helped you develop your shot. Can you talk about the work you've done with him and what he's really done to help you find that shot?

JAMAL SHEAD: A lot of it is just reps, just staying in the gym trying to perfect your craft. He's a great coach. He just tries to keep me motivated and keep me in the gym. I think that's what it came down to.

Q. After the game, former UH great Hakeem Olajuwon, he said, these guys know how to win. They know how to win. What does that mean to you, knowing how to win and how important that is?

KYLER EDWARDS: It's always nice getting high praise from one of the best players to play the game. So just having that praise from him and the way he likes how we play the game is just good for us.

Q. Question for Jamal. Your growth and development, how much have you leaned on some of these veteran players, and how has that helped your game, especially with the time you're seeing on the floor this year?

JAMAL SHEAD: With being in the backcourt with Kyler and Taze, they've played a lot of college games. Especially Kyler. He knows how to win. He's been at every stage. Having that guy next to me in the backcourt has given me a lot of confidence. Especially with Fabian and Josh telling me to keep shooting or what they see.

As a point guard, you like to listen to everybody on the team because you know you have the ball mostly. Those guys opened my eyes up. Me and Fab talk about certain spots, certain shots, and I think that's just helped me a lot this year.

Q. Fabian, you were part of this group last year. To be up there with a completely different starting five and to be in a position to maybe get back to the Final Four, what does it say about this group and how you guys have come together and what have you seen the growth in this group?

FABIAN WHITE JR.: Just maturity. We've got a lot of older guys. Taze playing college basketball five years. J.C. playing college basketball five years. Kyler's a senior. We've got a lot of experience. We don't get too high, too low in the games. We just stay solid really. I think as a team we just bonded really, especially over the off-season, with how hard conditioning is and just how hard practice is.

We just stick together through adversity really.

Q. For any of you guys, you heard Kelvin talk about Villanova being one of the big brands of college basketball, but here you are back in the Elite Eight, on the doorstep of the Final Four, and you're favorites to win the championship now. What do you think of the U of H basketball brand now?

KYLER EDWARDS: I mean, we went from people not believing in us. Now we're the highest percentage to win a National Championship. We don't really feed into all of that. We just really take one game at a time and just really play our brand of basketball.

Q. Kelvin, could you tell us about some of the challenges that Villanova presents?

THE MODERATOR: We're going to keep this to student-athletes and keep Coach afterwards.

KELVIN SAMPSON: Take his question opportunities away since he didn't pay attention to the original statement. (Laughter).

Q. Fabian, Taze, Josh, just curious, we talked all year about maybe the lack of attention you guys have received or whether it's a lack of quadrant one or an underseeding, do you think maybe now you guys have opened some eyes, or does it really even matter at this point?

FABIAN WHITE JR.: We don't really pay attention to the media and all that other stuff. We just try to stay in our little bubble, just work hard, play to the culture, and win the next game really because we want to keep playing and keep advancing.

Q. For any of you guys, what are the challenges of playing a team as experienced as Villanova?

JAMAL SHEAD: You know they have a lot of older guys. They're mature. They know how to win. We have a lot of older guys. I feel like it will be a great matchup and a great game to have.

Q. I had a question for Fabian. Fabian, there was a column in USA Today this morning. I wanted to read you one statement that was made by the writer. It was an opinion piece. The comment was Houston -- it was about last night's game. He said Houston's physicality on every single play made things so difficult that Arizona quite literally didn't know what to do. I just wanted to ask if you agreed with that and why or why not.

FABIAN WHITE JR.: That's just how we play. We play physical. In practice, we barely call fouls. We dive on the floor, barely lose the ball in practice. That's just our culture. We want to play physical and not make the game easy for the opponent. Yeah, I agree with that statement. We want to play physical as much as possible.

Q. Fabian or Josh, this is a direct quote from your athletic director, get your butt to San Antonio. That was his plea from the folks in Houston to San Antonio. Have you guys been putting out messages to folks saying there's no reason not to make that three hour drive to support you tomorrow?

JOSH CARLTON: I think we had a great crowd Thursday night. Hopefully they can show up again. Another team like Arizona, their fan base travels. We know they have a great fan base. So they're going to show up. If everybody could show up in San Antonio and support us, that would be great. That's just another advantage for us.

Q. For any of the players, I hate to put you on the spot like this in front of Kelvin, but for any of the players, what's your favorite part about playing for Kelvin Sampson?

JAMAL SHEAD: I'll answer that. He never changes. He's the same guy day in and day out, and I think that's just most important for our team. I think that's my favorite part for sure. He's always going to be the same guy, same energy, and that just keeps our team level headed at all times.

Q. Throughout the season, a lot of leagues where teams are beating each other up all year get a lot of the attention. In your league it seems like maybe you're the game that every opponent gets up for and focuses on. What's better in terms of preparing for the tournament, and is the setup that you guys have had worked in your favor at all?

KELVIN SAMPSON: What do you mean by setup?

Q. (No microphone)?

KELVIN SAMPSON: Yeah, okay. It's been like that for about four years now. I think it was 17/18 when the kid from Michigan threw that shot in, so it started that next year. I think the next year we went 33-4 and lost to Kentucky. But that entire season, we started off 15-0 or 16-0. I don't remember how high we got ranked, but you could tell.

So this was the fourth year of it. Because we just came off a Final Four. We were, we got everybody's best shot. It was alumni night, whiteout, blackout, bring back the class of '63 night. It was a night everywhere. It's the biggest crowds, Saturdays. It's just the way it's been for us. But that's the price you pay. We're going to be -- we've had a bull's eye on our back for a while.

[ Audio muted ].

We play in a really good league, very well coached league. SMU on the road on a Tuesday or Wednesday night in January or February, it's a tough game. You saw what Memphis did to Gonzaga. That wasn't a fluke. Memphis could have easily won that game. They're as good as anybody we've played so far.

But every league has a best team, a team that you shoot at. But I think that's helped us understand that we can't have slip-ups. We went 15-3 in our league. I think what I was most proud of was we went 7-2 on the road. It's hard to win on the road, especially when it's such a big game for that team. I was proud of that.

As far as other leagues, every year is always the same. You believe what you read about. Our conference isn't -- we're a street over from Main Street. You go down and take a right, and there's the American Athletic Conference. You don't take a right for those other leagues. I've coached in those leagues. I know how that is.

In college basketball you can win a championship from anywhere. Gonzaga is a championship program. Houston, I think, is a championship program. Villanova's a championship program. All the teams -- you know, Texas Tech is -- I watched them play. It wouldn't surprise me if they won the championship this year. Such a fine line between winning when you get this far, winning and losing. It's such a fine line. Who's playing good, who's not, what's your matchup.

It's like the seeding thing. Are you underseeded? Are you overseeded? I just don't ever pay attention to that stuff. Who do we play? We went to the conference tournament -- these weeks and days start running together for me. Whenever it was. Our first game was Cincinnati, second game Tulane, third game was Memphis, won all three of those. Next game was UAB, next game was Illinois, and next game was Arizona. Now our next game's Villanova. That's just the way I think. I don't think about seeding. It's just get my team ready to play the next game. That's kind of always been my deal.

Q. You mentioned Villanova's brand as a great program. How do you feel like, to kind of reframe that question to you and to Houston, I would say that maybe Houston basketball has a brand or had a brand, Phi Slama Jama and its history and things like that. How do you feel that aligns with what you do with the program and the way you approach building a program and the way you want your teams to play? Is there a connection between what the traditional quote, unquote brand was and what you do with your program now?

KELVIN SAMPSON: Not really. This is 2022. Every kid that we recruit was born in 2000s. Most of these kids have no idea who -- I do. I saw them play. I remember. But these kids don't. These kids know who Quentin Grimes is. They watched him last year go to the Final Four. Kids in our part of the country know who Rob Gray is. You guys probably don't.

But we sell our program. We sell our program, this era. Older reporters talk a lot about Phi Slama Jama because that's what they remember. These kids, we're getting ready to redo the Guy V. Lewis Development Center. It should always be known -- Jim Nantz is a good friend of mine, and he's always talking to me about that. Look, Jim, Guy V. Lewis built the brand University of Houston.

When I was trying to decide whether to do this or not, one of the reasons why -- it's like Billy Tubbs at Oklahoma. One of the reasons why I went to Oklahoma is because of what Billy Tubbs did. Billy Tubbs plowed that field, planted the seeds. He showed me that that field could be prosperous. So we went to Oklahoma because I knew we could win because of what Billy did.

I would say the same thing about Coach Lewis. Both those guys are Hall of Fame coaches. They're icons in college basketball. It's been so long. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do it. That's all they have is Phi Slama Jama. They have nothing from 1984 to 2018. Kids coming up now, we never hear of Phi Slama Jama, unless it's an older reporter, like Matt Nielsen. He always talks about it. Mark Berman's a Wild Card. You never know what he's going to ask. Joseph Duarte is a more studious type, analytical type, but those are my guys, the Houston guys. The players don't relate to it anymore, but the fans do, and that's great.

When I think of Phi Slama Jama, I think of success. But as far as recruiting, you never talk about it or never mention it because it's not relative to these kids today, but it is relative to the program. I think you should honor the past, but don't live in it. Live in the future. Live for today.

Q. Kelvin, you talked about during previous NCAA Tournaments with UH, how rough it was the first couple of years in terms of furniture and exposure and on and on. These last three years specifically, Sweet 16, Final Four last year, Elite Eight, maybe the Final Four this year and more. What's it mean for everything in the future that you're continuing to build? You have Dana, who got to 12-2 this year. Your two flagship programs are competing at a very high level, and that's going to continue to lift the entire athletics programs up in terms of exposure, recruiting, everything you have to do to compete at the highest level in the NCAA.

KELVIN SAMPSON: Being invited to a Power Five school is -- I coached in the Pac-10, the Big 12, the Big Ten. College basketball is college basketball. You don't coach any different no matter where you are. There's a lot of teams in our league that would compete well in just about any conference.

But Houston was a little bit like an orphan for a while. All the other kids got foster homes. They got picked up by someone, and Houston didn't. They had to -- they got lost in the wilderness for a while. College basketball is about the teams you play. The teams you play build your program.

When I was at Washington State, UCLA -- every year UCLA, Arizona, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Arizona State came to Beasley Performing Arts Colosseum, Friel Court, and year after year families, generations looked forward to that. University of Houston had the southwest conference, so it was Texas, Arkansas, Baylor, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, and that's what they sank their teeth into. It was thriving.

No one remembers what a great player Otis Birdsong was. The greatest cougar of them all was not somebody from Phi Slama Jama. It was Elvin Hayes. He's the godfather. But all those things went by the wayside when they didn't get picked up to go to the Big 12. They all started losing their bearings. So it's conference USA. Instead of Texas A&M, it was Old Dominion. Instead of this school, it was this school. Then it hurt recruiting.

I thought the administrators dropped the ball on facilities. Before I came, they fired a coach every four years. 16 years, four coaches. Facilities didn't change. So whose fault is that? You keep firing coaches, but you haven't done anything to help them.

That was the thing that I did. I didn't ask. If not for me, then the next coach. You don't do it -- our job is to put these student-athletes in the best position to be successful. It's like nobody cared, nobody believed. That's what disappointed me the most.

Now we've had to overcome a lot in those first few years, whereas a school like Villanova can't relate to that. They've always been Villanova. We played Villanova when I was at Oklahoma. It was Kyle Lowry and that bunch. With Villanova, the next era kept the previous era relevant because they never went down. They've just been so great over the years, and having a Hall of Fame coach like Jay Wright, who's an icon in this profession himself. He's going to get what it takes to keep that program relevant and great, whereas Houston was aching and begging for just relevancy. Villanova was always Villanova.

But Houston's coming back. We're building a sustainable product here. This is our fifth year being ranked. It should be our fifth consecutive year, and that's a big deal for us. We're not Villanova. Villanova's up here. We're down here. We're not -- maybe one day we can, but we're not there yet, and that's okay. You have to be comfortable in your own skin.

There's not a lot of Villanovas. Last year neither Duke nor Kentucky made the NCAA Tournament. A lot of programs have gone down and gone back up, but not Villanova. They're great every year. That's a credit to the administration, but that administration's lucky to have Jay Wright.

Q. After what you said, I should probably ask this, well, back in the day, the Phi Slama Jama but I won't.

KELVIN SAMPSON: Well, it's 2022, so you're right, you probably shouldn't.

Q. But one of the greatest ever, Hakeem Olajuwon, said last night, he loves the way you guys play, you know that, but he said these guys know how to win. They know how to win. That's not exactly a skill set, that's more of a mindset. How do you get that across that they've acquired that skill set?

KELVIN SAMPSON: That's probably an unanswerable question. I don't know. I kind of feel stupid. What's our record right now? Last year's team knew how to win too. Last year we were 28-4. The year before that, I don't know how many wins we had. The year before that, it was 33. The year before that was 27. It's about this year's team. It's every year. Our program knows how to win. You have to dig deeper than asking about this year. You're kind of late asking about this year's team. You're kind of late to the party.

Q. I think last night or previously you mentioned the fan base having to relearn how to be a fan base. I wonder if you have a distinct memory when you came aboard of that skepticism that you kind of felt was maybe permeated everything around the program when you really realized what that looked like.

KELVIN SAMPSON: When I took the job, I felt like we had to be Walmart. We had to do everything. We had a marketing department, but we did not. Just this year. We played Memphis in our conference tournament championship, for instance. And the hotel I was staying in kind of had a panoramic view in the back. You could see different, over here, over here, over here.

And my wife said, come look at this, and it was -- I can't remember what time. I think it was early afternoon. It was on a Sunday. Selection Sunday, that day. Memphis was getting ready to get on the bus and go to the arena and play us, and I saw lines of Memphis fans -- cheerleaders, the band. They had this big pep rally.

And I just shook my head. I said, you know, we should have thought of that. The coaches, my daughter Lauren. So I told Lauren, I said, Lauren, we need to get our fans out to support our guys because I felt bad. I feel bad that I had not done enough because we don't -- basketball season, we've had to do the marketing.

It's like I go around campus -- my daughter sets it up where I go around campus and have a bull horn. We go to the student union, and I kind of act silly and play with the students. I like that stuff anyway. So I'm okay with it. We've got a game. Football season's over. We are in Texas now. Basketball season started, we've got a game. Season starts Wednesday night at 7:00.

So we go and play Memphis, win the game, come back home, get back late that night. It's a four-hour bus ride from Fort Worth to Houston. We got back late, nobody there. I said this is going to be the last time this happens. I want our kids to feel special. If that's going to happen, I want to do it. So I had a radio show on Monday, and I talked about it. I said, when we go to the NCAA Tournament, I want our fans to come out and support these young men. They work hard. I mean, I know how hard this team works, and I want our fans to come out and show some support and appreciate them.

Lo and behold, we had a great crowd. I talked about it on the radio show. My daughter Lauren who's Director of Basketball Operations, she just took the bull by the horns and ran with it.

Then when we left to come to this tournament, went to Pittsburgh, and now here we are in San Antonio. We had a great sendoff. Last night after the game, went back to the hotel -- you've got to understand what this place looked like in 2014. I'm not going to go into that. That's where the gratification comes from. It's not the wins.

I appreciate that our fans appreciate our program now. We had to work at that. Schools like Villanova, you can't relate to that because you've never had to go and -- you haven't been down to these depths, and to see where it is now and to see the look on our kids' faces.

I'm probably too old to -- when you get old like me, everything you do is for the players. It's their program. It's the players' program. Fabian White, the winningest player in the history of our school. He's not from another era. He's from this era, these kids right now, the now, today, 2022. Be proud of that. Don't live in another era. I felt like I've had to constantly educate that, that we are good. We have a really good basketball program. Are we iconic? Of course not. Are we great? Long way away.

But we're working hard to get better. We've got some sustainment going that's been pretty good. You go to a Final Four, recruiting changes. It helps. It brings visibility to your program.

But I do appreciate our staff. I've got a great staff. Three former players are on my staff. I like to keep familiarity around. It helps our kids. It's been fun building this. It had to be built. It had to be built the right way, and it had to be built brick by brick. We did it. We built it brick by brick.

Q. Coach, given the new universe of the NIL, are you comfortable with the current environment of few rules, or should there be more from the NCAA or conferences? And the second part to that is how do you see the new NIL impacting a program like Houston's as you see developments like multimillion dollar collectives that have popped up at other programs?

KELVIN SAMPSON: To answer your first part, I don't know how this can go forward unless you do have some directives. I don't know enough about it. Dana Holgorsen, our football coach, he and I and Kellen our associate head coach, Dana's associate head coach and Chris Pezman, our athletic director, we met about what are we going to do? What are the parameters? What do we need? I think everybody is looking at what everybody else is doing because I don't know what to do. I don't know enough about it.

Now, fortunately for us, we've got a pretty good recruiting class coming in. NIL did not come up with any of those kids. The NIL, I think, from what I can gather, I think it's going to pertain more to your current players than the -- for basketball than the kids coming in. It depends who you're recruiting. I don't recruit the same kids that the top level schools may be recruiting. Look at the kids on this stage. None of these kids, I don't know if any of them have -- one of our players, maybe Sasser and Tramon, they may. I don't know if any of these kids have NIL deals.

I don't know that that has affected us yet, but I'm sure it will. I think the unknown part is the future. What's that going to look like? Between the transfer portal and NIL, all those things are things that are program builders. I've always thought of myself as a program builder, and there's a lot of great ones out there. It's like everything's set up to be anti-program building because it's hard to build in cement now. Everything is almost in sand.

I've spent -- my assistant said we've got to do this. We've got to do that. They're coaching me more than I'm probably coaching them on this stuff because I don't know enough about it. But fortunately for us, we just have phenomenal kids, just like the people in the Philadelphia area main line know how great those Villanova kids are. So are ours. Our kids are great, just as good. That's why that stuff hasn't infiltrated on us yet. Nobody's held us for ransom. If you want me, here's what it's going to take.

I haven't had any of that. I don't know if I should say yet or not. I'm not sure how much I want to get into that game. I want kids who want to play basketball. I want kids who want to develop or get better or play in the NBA. Not to see how much money I can make along the way. That probably sounds archaic, but that's kind of the way I feel about it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you so much for your time, Coach. Best of luck tomorrow.