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It’s quiet. Until it’s loud.
Then the intensity of Houston Cougars head coach Kelvin Sampson ravages, consumes and dwarfs all other energies and it swells to a deafening boom and his team is winning yet again. Though he doesn’t say much pregame, he roars to life in the heat of competition, a genius tactician solving the ever-evolving list of problems that appear every 40 minutes. His squad has done a lot of winning over the last five years. Stack up all the other blue bloods in the country. Look at their win totals since the decade changed. Count them all. See what the facts say; no other men’s basketball program has more wins in the 2020s than the Cougars.
Coach’s intensity has been simmering for decades. Samp, as his players refer to him, is no stranger to the weight of patrolling the sidelines. It’s been more than 40 years since he started coaching. All of his other stops led him to UH in 2014. The pillars of his coaching style have taken root deep in the dirt under the Fertitta Center after all this time.
Samp teams are known for discipline. Defensively, they never stop rotating. Offensively, they never stop attacking. Regimented, drilled over and over again. A direct reflection of Coach Samp’s intensity. Not a lot said with words, but a ton said with action.
His on-court demeanor was mirrored in the offseason. Fresh off an appearance in the 2025 national championship game, he almost silently welcomed in the third-best recruiting group in the class of ’25. Three of those incoming freshmen were top 20 in the country. Kingston Flemings, a four-star point guard out of San Antonio, is a lightning bolt of a scorer. Isiah Harwell, a four-star shooting guard out of Idaho, is a smooth offensive creator at a versatile 6-6. And Chris Cenac Jr, the No. 1 center in his class, came to Houston from New Orleans as a do-everything kind of big.
But Coach’s real strength lies in the return of three upperclassmen who have already walked through the fire with him. Senior point guard Milos Uzan is the utmost floor general. His eyes are always scanning the floor, always looking for senior shooting guard Emanuel Sharp, the knockdown shooter whose right hand is damn near stuck in the cookie jar. And when opponents take those Sharp shots out the net, they have to contend with junior Joseph Tugler, the Big 12’s reigning Defensive Player of the Year. Like his 7-5 wingspan, his effort is unending.
This group has seen Coach Samp’s intensity up close. They’ve felt it. They’re gonna be the players he entrusts with completing a mission that’s been years in the making—the mountaintop.
Those pillars of discipline rooted beneath the Fertitta Center show up at our shoot with the Cougars. There’s lots of laughing and joking around during our time with this group, but at different times, Tugler, Sharp and Uzan each tell their teammates to lock in. They each use different words, but it’s clear that these three upperclassmen know how to take care of work.
Work, especially within Coach Samp’s program, starts on defense.
Apply pressure, make five move as one, an invisible string tying together this tapestry that moves. Zoom in, make that string visible and you’ll see whose hands are sewing this immovable blanket. Tugler is the seamstress, weaving it all together. In motion, the 6-8 forward can cover the whole floor with just a few steps. He runs baseline to baseline on closeouts with exceptional chopped steps and extended arms that obscure the visionary path of anyone attempting to get a look at the rim. When he engages his hands on the ball, they find their way to weakside blocks, on-ball steals and photon-like-speed deflections. It’s at will. His disruptions just happen. The frequency with which he is in the passing lanes is akin to how others take strolls in the park on a Sunday afternoon. He looks like an actual cougar when he jumps out to hedge pick-and-rolls. He meets ballhandlers on the perimeter with a stupefying fusion of speed and strength. Not only does he welcome contact from the opposition—he absorbs and negates it. When he’s playing stationary defense, his preparation is clear. He’s patient, studied in tendencies and preferences. He’s sitting in a chair in a classroom, an A+ lockdown defender. He’s the heartbeat of this living organism that is the Houston defense.
The stops only last for a second of real time, but they require countless hours of practice beforehand.
“It’s just all that work you put in, what you’ve been practicing for the moment,” Tugler tells SLAMU. “You’ve been going over all their plays to get that stop you’ve been wanting, y’all been working for. Should feel happy, you know?”
The rest of the squad swarms, trapping opponents like prey between snapping jaws. They blow up pick-and-rolls and they squeeze in the paint. Two on-ball defenders are a mainstay of their strategy. It’s the signature intensity of Coach Samp, funneled through the leadership of these three upperclassmen.
Cenac Jr is already following the leadership of Tugler.
“He’s taught me a lot,” Cenac Jr says. “We kind of play the same position. Just coming in being tough, playing as hard as you could, just listening to everything that Coach Samp is saying and, you know, everything that you want is gonna come.”
Though Tugler and Cenac Jr will be sharing the frontcourt, the five-star freshman has a completely unique skill set as compared to almost anyone in the nation. The flashes of future brilliance are constant for Cenac Jr. A true footer, but it’s an injustice to call him a center. He feels more like a vision of where the game is going. He fulfills all of the defensive expectations of a traditional 7-footer; he can swat shots, he can pick up steals, he can pull down boards. That’s about where the tradition stops, though. He can swat those shots because he’s able to switch out on to smaller ballhandlers and stay with them as they take the foolish and hopeless journey to the rim. He can pick up those steals because, like Tugler, his arms stay in the passing lanes. He can pull down those boards and take the ball downcourt, which is when the crazy stuff happens.
Remember, this is a 7-foot, 18-year-old. A current mold-buster and a future mold-maker. So when you see him grab the ball off the glass, hit his first defender with an elusive dribble combo, fight through contact from the second line of defense and finish at the rim with a right-handed smash, it’s gonna be a shock. It’s gonna make you look at the friend you’re watching the Cougars with, unspoken in your “the f*** was that?” kind of shared reaction. A footer with wiggle and strength? Most other kids his age are just trying to get enough coffee in their systems to finish their first semester finals.
But there are two other kids his age who are also putting in work. One of them is Idaho’s own Isiah Harwell. The Pocatello product attended high school in Utah, where he won Player of the Year. That’s quite a statement considering who else attended high school in Utah this past year. The 6-6 combo guard is a knockdown shooter and elite shot creator, for both himself and his teammates. Zai, as he’s known, has a polished overall offensive skill set at his disposal. And he keeps it simple. It’s rare to find him playing with his food. Instead, he’s straight to it; one or two dribble pulls out of triple threat, calm lays over the trees, fluid catch-and-shoots, an advanced midpost arsenal. It’s a maturity that’s rare these days when the dance matters more to kids than the finish. But Zai is optimized efficiency.
His defense is nothing to gloss over, either. In fact, he went on record in July by saying one of his goals is to win DPOY as a freshman. He makes good use of his 6-6 frame by sitting down on the perimeter and keeping the ball in front of him. Maturity isn’t just limited to having the ball in his hands. Like his offensive mindset, he’s just as advanced defensively. If only for the simple reason that he wants to compete. That desire is already a separation factor. Add it to the fact that he has the physical tools to make stops happen, and it’s a scary threat for the Big 12.
“The most challenging thing is just playing hard all the time,” Harwell tells SLAMU. “You not taking nothing off, no possession, no fast break, no transition defense, no nothing, so that’s just getting us in shape, too. That’s been the most rewarding thing I've seen so far. Our defense has been great the last couple games that we've played. I mean we've been playing against each other all day in practice, so it's kind of hard, you know? At that point you're practicing against, like, the best defensive team in the nation. Just learning from that and it definitely helps, as you can see.”
The other freshman destroying opponents is Kingston Flemings. The 6-4 point guard, as of this writing, is leading Houston in scoring. Yeah, the freshman is the Cougars’ best scorer at 16.6 points per game. And not only that, but he’s also leading the squad in assists with 5.3 per game.
Flemings’ confidence floods through any screen that he’s being watched on. He knows there’s not a single soul who can stay in front of him. He shifts around the floor like he placed a bunch of slip ’n slides out there, making defenders look silly, lost in the waves. Leaving folks bewildered behind him, Flemings can rise up to select from a menu full of different finishes. Whatever the moment calls for, this son of San Antonio has it. Awkward-angled soft touches off the high glass with either hand, kangaroo-quick leaps for blink-and-you-missed-it dunks or a form on his knockdown jumper that’s completely his own. Flemings’ flow forces so much chaos that he’s constantly in the gaps, where he gets to put his vision on full display. The man knows how to thread the needle, whether he’s looking at his receiver or not (he’s probably not looking). He gets particularly saucy on these dimes. Often, they’re off a right-handed dribble, fired off so rapidly that he doesn’t even involve his left hand. Bullet-fast, he’s headed back down the floor to lock in on defense before the bucket is scored.
“Kingston is a point guard [who] understands the game at a high level,” Coach Samp said right after Flemings committed to Houston. “His athleticism, quickness, competitive spirit…everything you want in a point guard.”
Flemings became the unquestioned showman in the first few games at Fertitta Center, injecting the crowd with unseeable, but palpable energy that raises the decibel levels. However, he has to prove himself over an entire season, like Milos Uzan has.
Though Uzan began his college career at a different school, he played and started in every single contest for the Cougars last season, all 40 games. His stats from last season just scream consistency. He was the floor general that was gonna play 30-plus minutes and have a 3:1 assist to turnover ratio. At 45 percent from the field overall and 42 percent from three, he couldn’t be left open. At nearly 80 percent from the line, he made defenses pay the price for fouling him. His true shooting percentage of .554 paints an even better picture of how efficient he was. That’s the dependability Coach Samp requires out of his coach on the floor, especially now that major talent from last season’s title game run has left.
“I think it changes because I’m more in a leadership role for guys like Kingston and, shoot, Chris, Isiah, I gotta lead by example now,” Uzan says of his role after the departure of last season’s seniors. “I feel like I'm still being [as] vocal as I was, just probably a little bit more now. And then with LJ [Cryer] gone, J’Wan [Roberts] gone, that's some of the scoring gone, so I gotta improve in that way as well.”
Boom, bop, beware Uzan’s left to right cross into the jumper. It’s cash. Just look at the follow through on his threes. Both arms and both hands stay up all the way until the shot drops, a progression that Monica Wright would be jealous of. He’s textbook, he’s proven, he’s trustworthy. Eyes always up on every drive to the paint, always ready to hit an open man.
One of his favorite targets is Emanuel Sharp, the senior with the rim always in his scope. As the son of a former EuroLeague pro and a former collegiate player, his path to Houston wound through Israel and Canada and Florida. With basketball flowing through his blood, he’s worked his way up through the ranks of the Cougars program to become its fail-safe. When all else goes wrong, find the one they call Eman. The year-over-year improvement is obvious. He redshirted his first season on campus, then he played 33 games as a freshman, then he started 32 as a sophomore, then he started 36 as a junior. Now, as a senior, he’s the leader.
Sharp’s got an ill-turned jumpshot, meaning that he doesn’t go straight up and down when he rises. It’s not what the basketball textbook teaches, but it is what actually playing the game teaches. Through years and years of performing his craft, Sharp has learned how to contort his body to account for whatever angle he’s at and whatever amount of force is accompanying him on his release. The result is a shot that often sees him land on his left foot before his right foot makes contact with the court, influenced directly by the fact that his shoulders aren’t always square to the rim. It’s high-level shotmaking. Sharp is in tune with his body and his surroundings. Watching him shoot is watching him read the world in front of him.
But Sharp isn’t just an offensive fail-safe, though. This man never stops moving on defense. He’s always good for at least one interception a game. And when asked about what these star freshmen should know about on-court chemistry within the team, that’s the end Sharp brings up.
“Really on defense a lot,” Sharp says about where he feels the most chemistry. “We be knowing wherever each other supposed to be on the court. That’s stuff that these freshmen gotta build, but with me, Los and Joe, we already know where each other is supposed to be…switches on defense…we already know what each other is gonna do.”
They’re gonna guard. They’re gonna attack. They’re gonna win a lot. They’re gonna be quiet, almost unnoticed, until the moment late in the season when they roar to life, embodying Coach Samp’s intensity that ravages, consumes and dwarfs all other energies. This Cougars squad is coming, led by the battle-earned knowledge of Sharp, Uzan and Tugler, and revitalized by the turbo-injected force of Flemings, Harwell and Cenac Jr.
As the impending gauntlet gets more and more harsh, Sharp has one more message for his freshmen:
“They gotta know how much sacrifice they gotta make for the team,” he tells SLAMU. “It’s not always gonna be about you. Their individual success is gonna come from the team's success. They don't gotta worry about nothing individual-wise.”
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