On Wednesday, the Houston media had their first chance to attend a UH practice since the Cougars joined the Big 12 at the start of the month. Kelvin Sampson’s squad worked out before their trip to Australia early next month.
You can find video of portions of those chats here.
Another one from the Kelvin’s Quips vault –
Kelvin opened by talking about previous international trips he’d been on with collegiate teams. He mentioned the one in 1991 when he took Washington State to the USSR when a coup attempt occurred against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Sampson said he was in the Red Square when they learned what was happening. The team had to abort their travel schedule, taking a train to Finland instead of waiting for a planned flight to Copenhagen.
I went digging and found this from The Spokane Spokesman-Review in August 1991:
Regarding this year’s trip, Sampson acknowledged that the timing worked out for a program adding six new faces. Besides the four games down under, the team gets ten early practices added to their regular summer workout schedule.
“Some years are probably better than others, in terms of the timing of the trip,” Kelvin said. “Timing is good for this team because there’s so many new guys. We have so many freshmen: Kordel Jefferson, Jojo Tugler, Jacob McFarland, and big Ced Lath.
“Freshmen normally never play good in these things. And they shouldn’t. We’re not playing high school kids – we’re playing grown men.”
Opponents for the trip have yet to be finalized, but Kelvin said on Wednesday that his team will play the Sydney Hawks on August 7. A quick check shows two National Basketball League (NBL) teams in Australia that could fit the bill for that game: the Sydney Kings and the Illawarra Hawks. Either way, it’ll be a pretty good opponent.
He also believes at least one game will be against the Australian National Team. Four first-round picks are among the ten NBA players on Australia’s extended roster set to play in next month’s FIBA World Cup team. Sampson wished they could play all four games against the National Team.
Sampson says stats and game results are irrelevant this time of year. He said he wants the team and coaches to figure each other out.
“LJ (Cryer) is trying to fit in with the new team. Damian (Dunn) is trying to fit in with the new team. So, we’ve kinda got a smorgasbord of things we’ve got to work through. That’s why, from a basketball standpoint, the timing of this trip will help us regardless of what happens.”
He said if the season started today, Tugler is “probably a freshman that’s more ready to play than some of the other freshmen.” But he immediately said that’s today and could change in a month or three when the team meets to begin preseason practice.
Nuggets: LJ Cryer told us he would room with Jamal Shead, while J’Wan Roberts, who roomed with Jarace Walker last year, said he would live alone this school year. J’Wan is the only player to make two international trips with the program. He went to Italy in 2019.
Sampson gave J’Wan Roberts some good-natured ribbing on his way out of the arena. Roberts bricked a post-practice FT attempt and Kelvin told him he should shoot it with his feet. And then…
The team’s September conditioning workouts, usually among the most brutal of the year, will be scaled back after the trip to lighten the load heading into the Big 12 season.
Click for full coverage of UH’s trip to Australia:
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