Before heading to San Antonio, Kelvin Sampson shared his thoughts about Saturday’s super-secret preseason scrimmage with the Texas Longhorns. Arcane NCAA rules prevent Sampson from discussing the opponent, the location, or the time for the scrimmage.
Teams are allowed to play any combination of two scrimmages or exhibition games and 2022 will be the first year UH will play two scrimmages. Houston scrimmages Duke next Saturday.
In previous seasons, Sampson has chosen the 1/1 approach: one preseason scrimmage followed by an exhibition with teams such as Montana Tech (where he began his head coaching career), UNC Pembroke (his alma mater), and Angelo State, among others. The exhibitions are valuable as dress rehearsals but do not get teams ready for the season’s grind.
This season, Sampson wanted his deep and talented team to get two shots at high-level competition in the preseason. With several veteran players coming off of injury, as well as an elite but untested freshman class, two chances against talented teams made the most sense.
“It’s early in the year. We’re just seeing where we are,” All-American guard Marcus Sasser said. “Come out and compete the whole time you’re there…attitude and effort. Don’t worry about making shots or making mistakes. If you do make mistakes, make them going a thousand miles per hour.”
Sampson said Friday that he wants to see his team exposed, so the team can learn from their mistakes.
“We’ve never played against anybody else,” he said, referring to the current roster. “These freshmen, they know how to run a play, but they don’t know how to execute a play.”
The two teams will scrimmage, but he emphasized that the day is more than that. Sampson says he and the opposing coaches (this weekend, Chris Beard) will work on specific situations such as low shot clock, baseline out of bounds, sideline out of bounds, two-for-ones at the end of the half, and what to run out of a timeout.
Sampson says his team has matured since practice began a little over three weeks ago but he knows the next two Saturdays will be a learning experience.
“There’s a lot of things that we have not worked on, and if (the Longhorns) do those things, we probably won’t be very good at it. But that’s the purpose of the scrimmage.”
Kelvin Sampson, discussing scrimmages, the day before his team heads to (town in Bexar County) to play (university situated on 40 acres). pic.twitter.com/QsfepM8rsO
— GoCoogs.com (@gocoogs1) October 21, 2022
“Like, we don’t zone,” Sampson continued. “So, how much do you think we’ve worked on zone offense? Zero. We’re getting to the point now, starting November 7th, where we may see a zone. We work on zone in practice just so we can work against it.” November 7th is the team’s first game vs. Northern Colorado.
After rattling off numerous other situations he wanted to focus on, Sampson declared, “it’s not like we’re playing a game. It’s not a game. It’s a scrimmage.”
He says the most egregious mistakes from this week will likely be things he asks Duke head coach Jon Scheyer to work on next weekend.
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