Houston basketball is a bit different than most teams, with coach Kelvin Sampson building a program model that is predicated on grit and defense.
Sampson's core pillars have turned the Cougars into one of college basketball's top programs in recent years. It's no wonder why Houston plays the way it does — especially as videos of its practices were posted to social media in the leadup to the Cougars' national championship matchup against Florida on Monday night in San Antonio.
Drills centered around players fighting for loose balls and rebounds resemble a football practice more than a college basketball game. But Sampson's methods have obviously worked, as Houston's physicality and conditioning has been a winning formula.
"University of Houston basketball practice is different," wrote famed rapper Master P about the practices. "My son (Mercy Miller) is the youngest on the team. You have to be a real dawg or savage to survive this!"
Leading scorer LJ Cryer summed it up quite the same, providing some insight into the sometimes rough-and-tumble nature of practices:
“In practice, we don’t call fouls," Cryer told reporters leading up to playing Duke in the Final Four. "Shirts get ripped, people have bloody mouths, stuff like that. It’s an all-out war in practice, so whenever you get to the game, if the other team’s not playing with that intensity, it’s like you can kind of sense that there’s blood in the water.”
Far removed from the early 1980s Houston teams with future Basketball Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, Sampson won the Cougars' first NCAA Tournament game in 34 years in 2018, before securing a program record-33 wins in 2019. He took Houston to its first Final Four since 1984 in 2021, and has the Cougars back in the national championship game for the first time since 1984, as well, in 2025.
The Cougars, on paper, ...
