With college basketball in full swing and many teams already competing in key matchups, fans have a good idea of how they compare to their preseason expectations. For the Houston Cougars, however, those past expectations weighed on them as the team was ranked number two in the nation heading into the season and number one heading into their game against Auburn on Nov. 16. That game in particular marked a decline for Head Coach Kelvin Sampson’s group, but despite the concerns surrounding Houston, it’s still too early for fans to panic or assume their team is slipping.
After a season where the Cougars just fell short to the Florida Gators in the National Championship game, Sampson made it his goal to reload his roster with high-level talent, bringing in five-star recruits Isiah Harwell and Chris Cenac Jr., along with highly touted four-star Kingston Flemings. This marks by far the best high school recruiting class in the university’s history and the second best in the nation this year, according to ESPN. With the new additions, the Cougars held onto aspirations of returning to the pinnacle of college basketball with what was once viewed as an improved version of the roster that nearly won it all. To this point, despite the team’s prior number one ranking and its large victory margins against weaker schools, the team hasn’t shown that it can close out high-major opponents and has raised concerns about where it stands compared to last year.
The unnecessarily close games with unranked Syracuse and Notre Dame teams, along with No. 22 Auburn, and a loss to No. 17 Tennessee, looked like the growing pains of a team that lost its veteran leaders, J’Wan Roberts, LJ Cryer, Mylik Wilson, and Ja’Vier Francis. What many fans of the team underestimated is that those five alone contributed exactly 50 percent of the 2024-25 team’s 74.2 average points per game. Expecting three 18-year-old freshmen to take on the load those five veterans provided immediately is simply unrealistic. This is why the fan narratives surrounding this team are extremely premature. A major leadership change doesn’t diminish the team’s existing talent. Rather, it shows that the group is still learning to function with a new identity.
Even Sampson has attempted to slow down the hype. He stated in his press conference following the 73-72 win against Auburn, “These guys are just starting their careers … these guys were in high school last year,” in relation to how the three young freshmen handled the hostile Auburn crowd, while also accepting there is much room for improvement.
Zooming in on the loss against Tennessee, where Houston scored 73 points (barely under last year’s average of 74.2), the freshman trio combined for 32 points, largely inflated by Kingston Flemings’ 25-point effort, highlighting how dependent Houston has become on these younger players. Mixed with the heavy reliance on these new pieces, the older guys like Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp simply haven’t been consistent enough to take on the load at the same time the younger players experience their inevitable lapses in the game.
But strip away the noise, and it boils down to this: do we need to hit the panic button on UH yet? Not even close. Looking closely at the trends within last year’s Cougars team that fans are nostalgic over, it is important to examine the team’s outlook at this point last year to gauge whether some of these concerns were present then, and then fans can see they actually looked worse. While the team took care of the weaker opponents, there were also early losses to Auburn, who went on to make the final four, Alabama, who made the sweet 16, and worst of all, a loss to San Diego State, who didn’t even make the NCAA tournament, all within the span of three weeks. Following the shaky start, the team went undefeated the next two months and only lost one more regular-season game the remainder of the year. If history repeats itself and the Coogs can turn November jitters into March magic, Sampson and his team will see themselves right back on that big stage better than ever.
