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at Central Garage Utah dot com. Without further ado, let's
get out to the ESPN the Fan Hotline. We've had
them on the show before and welcome back in We
got Joseph Duarte, b writer for the Houston Chronicle. Joseph,
Thanks Joseph, thank you for joining me today. Hey, thanks
for having me on. Of course. Well, look, I need
you to break it down for me. This is a
Houston team that I feel like hasn't been talked about
enough this year. But when I look at them on paper,
it's the same as always. Uh def taxes at Kelvin Sampson, Yeah,
pretty much.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, the two assos are too ranked
teams Tennessee and Texas Tech by I believe a combined
seven points. So, uh, you know they I believe they
began the year preseason two or three. So I mean,
you look, you look at what their body of work
is has been to date, and uh, yeah, I don't
I don't think a lot of people so far talking
about them, But that's because there's a lot of other
good teams in the Big twelve alone that people are
talking about.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: But you know, the formula and the recipe is still there,
you know, Shelton Sampson stress is the rebounding, the taking
away turnovers and the uh and the defensive part, and
that's sort of has been what's kept them in games
this year. New cast of characters, but really same script
as as Houston's had in the past.
Speaker 2: Number seven team in the net right now, they're eight
to one a conference play twenty and two overall losses
only coming in QUA one games. Wanted a neutral site
against Tennessee by three, and then, like you mentioned, Texas
Tech on the road in a true road environment. I
love this Houston team. I love what to see on paper,
the physicality. You said, a new cast, who's a new cast?
The fan should be aware of going into the Marriott
Center tomorrow night.
Speaker 3: Well, it's the two freshman starters. The point guard, Kingston Flemmings,
he's the one who on that that special Saturday a
couple of weeks ago, had forty two forty three against
Texas Tech in that road loss. And then Chris Sanak,
who is the fourth spot. He'll he'll be the one
that that probably butts heads with a j most of
the game on Saturday. And those are two of the
five stars that they brought in. They were two of
the best at their positions in the last recruiting cycle.
They have a third member that was a five Stars
Isaiah Harwell, he's more of a bench player. But uh,
you know, they've got the the returners around them, Milosusan,
Emanuel Sharp, Jojo Tugler. Those three were returners from the
National Championship Game team. But the two freshmen have carried
their share of the load this year. And this will
be an interesting environment for them because they haven't played
in many places that will be rocking as much as
the Marriott Center is on Saturday night.
Speaker 2: How do you expect, you know, for them to do.
You just mentioned that they haven't, but I mean Kingston
Fleming just dropped forty two to the night I think
AJ had dropped forty three. Waggler from Illinois's freshing classes ridiculous.
First of all, I'm excited to see where they all
go in the NBA Draft, But how do you expect
them to handle this pressure tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Well, Flemings is sort of you know, I was looking
at the stats. I believe he's averaging like twenty five
twenty six points against ranked teams this year. So me
he They both have been in you know, on the
on the Nike circuit and all the the AAUS. I mean,
they've played against a lot of the top talent before
they even got to college. And you know, the the
Auburn game, I think, non conference one of the first
couple of weeks of the season they were It was
basically a road game because it was in Birmingham, not
too far from from all Burns campus, and they both
just really took off in that game. So Flemings has
really stepped up a lot just to throughout the season,
and Sanak has been more of a a work in progress.
You know, he played five to five in high school
and he wanted to come in and play the four.
So you've got this bigger guy who tends to have
to go outside on the perimeter and guard some of
the the faster, quicker guards and that's been a little
bit of a development for him. But you know, both
of them have have shown flashes this year mostly you know,
Flemings throughout it and Senec the Sinata the last couple
of weeks.
Speaker 2: Alexinat junior to six for eleven, twy pound freshman averaging
nine and a half and grabbing just under eight boards
and under an assist and fifty percent from the field.
You said, he's probably going to get the assignment to
start off on AJ. When you look at AJ on film,
what do you see and what is his coaching staff? See,
that's the guy that seems to slow down for BYU
right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and Andvin Kelvin when he when he
looks at teams and he looks at the complete body
of work, and you know, he's he's real complimentary of
of of Richie Saunders and he likes the way that
what he can do and how he can beat you.
And you know they're familiar with UH Rob Wright from
UH from his days at Baylor, and then you look
at AJ and when Kelvin was recruiting Sanak and Flemings,
you know, he would be at games where he would
get a chance to see AJ playing.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, he he doesn't prop up freshman as much
as some coaches do, but he knows the talent that's there.
We know, we asked him maybe, uh some of the
freshmen that he's coaching his career against that he's just
thought of been out of this world. He mentioned Gary Payton,
Jason Kidd, Paul Pierce, Carmelo, Anthony tj Ford, and then
he was like on AJ. You know, he said that
he was more of the score and abilities, more like
a Carmelo. So that's that's pretty high praise, uh from Kelvin.
But uh, you know, they they know it's it's more
than just the banter that they're gonna have to to
go against. But it certainly starts with him, because, I mean,
you look at this BYU roster. I mean, they average
almost ninety points a game, and those three alone account
for about sixty of them on most nights. So it's
it's a tough challenge. But Houston's number two defensively and
scoring allowed, so it should be a fun one. I
don't know, you know, Houston showed the ability that they
can score. I don't know if that's the type of
game they want to get into, but things generally always
start and usually finished with how they do on defense
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: You just brought it up. You said ninety points a game,
and I'm sitting next to two guys listening. They were
shaking their head of I don't think by you scored
ninety points tomorrow against this this Houston team. This is
a team that, look, I need you to give me
some insight from last year's team because you got still
Emmanue Sharp, my little Suzan. You still got Joseph Tuggler,
who were part of that great team last year with LJ.
Speaker 3: Crime.
Speaker 2: Man, it was beautiful watching you guys play basketball. Honestly,
I know by You suffered a couple of losses, but man,
and I think the average mile was what five and
a half minutes by the team or something. Waking up
at five am. Yeah, I'm like, this team is gonna
pick you up ninety four feet for forty minutes and
they're not gonna be out of breath.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's what they do. They just they
grind you. You know, you hear a lot on the
TV telecasts that there's there's not many teams out there
that will outwork Houston. And it all starts with, you know,
the hustle plays. I mean that you'll you could count
them up tomorrow. There's probably more than a dozen plays
where you're gonna see their guys just diving on the floor,
wrestling with you, just fighting for that that extra inch,
if you gotta get your hand on the ball. Uh.
And that's sort of what their DNA is. That's that's
how they beat you. And a lot of good teams
end up looking average when when they when they go
in and I've seen teams that score ninety on average
score fifty against Houston or sixty, and you know, they
they bring you down to another level. And as far
as last year, I mean, help them tell you this
team isn't as good as last year right now? That
I mean last year when you look at what they had,
the differences in the front court they had Juwan Roberts,
he was a six year guy, made a lot of
big plays.
Speaker 2: He was the.
Speaker 3: Winningest player in program history. He could just you could
run things through him and he could score. They don't
have that scoring consistency that they had last year with him.
They also lost A Jvier Francis, who he had like
a seven to six wing span. He could be a disruptor,
especially when he was on the court with Tugler, who
you know, was the big twelve defensive player of the year.
So you had a bunch of different things going. And then,
by the way, you had a really consistent probably one
through three scoring you know, they lost l. J. Cryer
and he could light you up on any minute. From
the three, they they've got flashes of that. Flimmings and
Sharper is good a one to two scoring punch that
they've had. The third option that has just kind of
fluctuated this year. It's between Uzan maybe Sanak, but it's
really that's just not where it is for them. So
there's been games where when they get into lolls, they
get in these lapses on offense that they have to
really rely on their defense to keep things close other otherwise,
you know, they you know, they're a couple of times
this year they've fallen behind, you know, ten or twelve
points and had to make up some grounds in the
second half.
Speaker 2: You don't want to loose, go down ten to twelve
points in the Mayor out Center, one on the toughest
places to play in the Big twelve. It's hard to
play in the Big twelve in general. But if there's
a team to get down and come back, I believe
it's uh Houston and Kelvin Sampson. This is a program
that Look, he he is a he's a guy that
can really do it. Look, he had a quote the
other day, I'm gonna watch just shit some more light
on it, you know about hey or are. We have
a very poor athletic department, you know, with nil and everything,
And I just speak thinks that speaks more to him
and his his his coaches, his recruiting and everything that
you're still able to get this high level talent, win
in a high level play in a national championship game
and you don't have the biggest, you know, nil budget.
I actually love that.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm disappointed it took you ten and a half
minutes to get to that, to get to this question. Yeah,
that's all the that's all the news that was going
down here. I actually, you know, talked to Kelby yesterday
he clarified some things. I wrote that he basically gave
himself a technical foul for what he said, because because
what happened, you know, he started to get into the
nil after the game. They have won the game, by
the way, and he's getting into nil and he says, look,
we're very poor. We were poor when I got here.
We're still poor. And you know, Houston, it's very well
known down here that Houston has been a heavily subsidized
athletic department for many, many years with support from the university.
And the latest NCAA financials came out and you know
they were they ran a deficit for the second year
in a row. So you got all that stuff, and
you think that's where he was going with them, but
he actually meant to say, look, we we like maybe
a Cincinnati or UCF or b YU haven't gotten the
full Big twelve share yet that's coming this spring. So
all those years, at least in Houston's case, where they
weren't in a power conference, they've lost out on hundreds
of millions of dollars. Baylor and TCU got those last
two spots of the Big twelve among the Texas schools
and I'm sorry Baylor in Texas Tech and then TCU
later on. That's just money that Houston never had. That
if they would have had it, this could have been
a totally different story of where they are. So he
got into that and he was talking about NIL. You
know that they it's that they're in. Nil's just not
where a lot of schools are. They've invested in their roster,
you know, they've been able to get several five star
guys like Flemings and Sanaka. They have a couple of
other ones coming in next year, but it's nowhere near
you know, Kentucky and Duke in North Carolina and all
the other schools that are traditionally up at the top.
So yeah, I mean, he he got a little bit
of a called into the principal's office, I guess so
to speak with those comments, but he kind of just
he was talking to it as a whole, mostly about
NIL and just needing to somehow start bridging that gap
with the revenue just tribution from the conference that's coming
here in the next few months.
Speaker 2: Thank you for shedding the light on that. Look, I
knew I was gonna ask the question, probably not letting
it be the first one. I just had to get
the game thing, and then transition.
Speaker 3: You had to slow us into it. I get you exactly.
I was going like Houston.
Speaker 2: I wanted to, you know, slow you down. Then I
wanted to speed you up, you know, in transition a
little bit the way I won before. Then. No, we're
all the line with Joe Stuarte. He's a beat writer
for the Houston Chronicle. Here right now here on ESPN
uh the fan, What way can by you win this
game tour on? Maybe from your perspective. Look, I'm not
picking them and the one I'm gonna tell you right now,
I do a basketball pre game show. This is one
of the teams they haven't beaten in the Big Twelve.
I don't know if it gets done tomorrow. Just with
how great of a coach Kelvin Sampson is a right
now b yu struggling man lost his last three games,
four of his last five. The defense is struggling. And
I just think, you know you mentioned it. Even when
Houston gets down, they find a way to claw themselves back.
Speaker 3: I think you know there's maybe something from like the
tech game tech tech control the boards, and that's one
thing you know, Houston in the past has been traditionally
one of the top rebounding teams in the in the country,
and in fact in offensive rebounds. You know, they had
been anywhere from maybe third to tenth over the last
few years and I believe they're about twenty fifth right now.
So you know, they got killed on the board, especially
the offensive boards against Texas Tech. That's where some teams
have been able to, uh, to gain some ground, so
to speak. And you know, if you have the home
court like you do at the Marriott Center, maybe you
got to force them into some stuff early. You've got
to get them to to maybe beat some uncharacteristic turnovers
that kind of things, because they don't beat themselves and
that and that's what the discipline comes in with Kelvin teams.
He you know, they match they they scout and then
they do their matchups and they always find an edge
that if you have two or three guys, they find
a way to shut down one or two of them,
or at least take a couple of them out of
out of what their normal game plan would be and
how they do against other teams. So you know, there
there's it's certainly you know there's there's a code to
crack to beat them, and I don't think many schools
have figured that out over the years, but certainly, you know,
the rebounding aspect has been a little bit of a
one uh through the you know, the first you know,
twenty two games or whatever it's been so far.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you do score predictions, Joe, but
how do you see this one plan out? Could just
be why you crack the code tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is a high sixties, low
seventies game. I mean I think I don't see this
runaway at any point. You know, I can see Houston
by five or so four or five, but you know,
it's it's it's really uh yeah. The you hit it
earlier in the show about just being able to win
on the road in conference, and I saw a great
stat from the by U Athletic Department where you know,
Houston's doing the two games road swing to Utah and
only one school, Texas Tech, has ever won both of
their games on that swing. Everybody else has either lost,
boat or split. So this is a tough This is
a tough next few days for them, and then they
get the uh the Gauntlet of Iowa State, Arizona and Kansas.
Uh so, uh, I can I can see a split
on this road game. I can see them losing on Saturday.
Uh But you know they they're they're a little bit
on a on a roll right now, and I think
they'll they'll be prepared. I don't think it's gonna be
The environment is not going to to shell shock them.
They they they respect what Byu has. Kelvin raves about
the crowd there, but you know they've been in some
some big environments before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mayriot Center, although it's one of the tougher
places to play in the big toeven in the country.
Houston came in, you know last year, the year before
they they played in this. They are not going to
be phased, and that speaks to just to prepare in this.
Kelvin has first team and I respect that that. When
they won that seventy seven to seventy four, or maybe
it was seventy five, I can't remember. Trevornill had the
opportunity to tie and he missed a shot and they
were unphased that game, and I was very impressed and
I've been a big fan ever since. By you and
Houston been in the conference, and I've seen this program
play Kevin Young twenty four and three at home in
his two years, and the two of the three losses
come to ranked teams. So that tells you how good
this Big Twelve is. I'll finish up on this and
I'll get you out of here on this. Just your
thoughts on the Big Twelve Conference in this freshman class.
You mentioned a golf that you got to play, Darren Peterson.
Just your takeaways and evaluations of it.
Speaker 3: Well, first, on the on the conference. You know, last year,
it thought I saw everything when Houston went nineteen and one.
I mean that was remarkable in itself, and it showed
by them getting to the championship game at the final four.
But you know this year, you look at Arizona and
is there a team right now that can beat them?
And I think right now they're one on the list.
I don't even think there's a one, A.
Speaker 2: One B.
Speaker 3: I think they're a clear number one. And then you've
got Houston and then the one that I don't think
many people are talking about, Iowa State. You know, a
couple of weeks ago when they lost those games, I thought, okay,
well maybe maybe there's some kings in the armor, but no,
I mean they're just as much of a threat. Texas
Tech just doesn't go away. I mean they just find
a way. And they've got probably one of the best
players in the country with j. T. Topkin, and then
you got Byu. So to me, I think the league
is in Kansas. I me know, I got an eleven
year old who follows the rankings religiously. He's like, Dad,
Kansas wasn't even on the radar a couple of weeks ago.
Now they're almost at the top ten. I'm like, that's
how quickly things could change. You know, Peterson we think
is healthy. We think he'll get through the rest of
the season. They'll play him. So you've got five or
six schools right there alone that not only you know,
will contend for the conference title. I think two of
them can make the final four, maybe three of them.
You know the Big East City what back in the
late eighties at one time where they say three or
the four, uh, you know, the Big twelve could at
least get two in there, depending on how the regions
work out. So you know that's from a team standpoint,
and then you know, we talked about all the freshmen.
I'd hate to be the guy who has to pick
Freshman of the Year or the the awards there, because
I mean, you could you could have them. You know,
a bunch of them are are going to be first teamers.
And then by the way, you know, you look at
the NBA mock drafts. You know, I think nine of
ten overall and the cross basketball college basketball are in
the lottery right now. The kind of the top ten
picks are all freshmen. And you got co Opete from Arizona.
There's another guy. So I mean, this is a wild
year for the Big Twelve, not only from the youth aspect,
but the fact that you've got a really top heavy
group of teams that could all compete for a national title.
Speaker 2: You're not wrong. Great time to be a basketball fan,
Great time for our business to be uh beat writers,
to be radio talents and broadcasters and producers. This is
a wonderful time. I gotta let you go. You got
other responsibilities before I do. What's the best way we
can support you? What you do, your work and how
you do it.
Speaker 3: Just you know, I were at Houston Chronicle dot com
and I'm on Twitter. Joseph Underscore Duarte d U A
R T. And you know, look forward to my first
trip to the Marriott Center tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Look forward to seeing you down there, Joe.
Speaker 1: Safe travels.
Speaker 2: We'll see in provo.
Speaker 3: Thank you appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We'll let Joseph Duarte go. We're gonna go to break
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