AAC Preview: #6 Houston Cougars

2013-2014 Season Results: 17-16, 8-10 conference record. 6th in the AAC, 65-94 loss to Louisville in the second round of the AAC Conference Tournament.

Key Losses: TaShawn Thomas (transfer to Oklahoma), Danuel House (transfer to Texas A&M), Brandon Morris (graduation), J.J. Richardson (graduation), Tione Womack (graduation).

Key Returners: G Jerrod Stiggers, G L.J. Rose, F Danrad Knowles, G LeRon Barnes.

2014 Recruiting Class: J.C. Washington (ESPN 3-star, #52 PF), Torian Graham, Eric Weary Jr., Cavon Baker, Egi Gjikondi, Bertran Nkali, Devonta Pollard (all JuCo).

Houston enters the 2014-15 a brand new team. Head coach James Dickey resigned last season after four seasons with the Cougars, opening the door for four players from last season’s team to transfer to different schools. On top of that, the Cougars lost five more players to graduation. That’s a pretty sizable chunk of last year’s squad that is now gone, leaving the program in a big rebuilding year.

The Cougars needed a big name hire to help rebuild this Houston program, and they found their man in former Oklahoma and Indiana head coach Kelvin Sampson. Sampson, who was slapped with a five year show-cause order from the NCAA in 2008 for impermissible phone calls to recruits, most recently was an assistant for the Houston Rockets. He was already in town, so Sampson figured he might as well take over Houston’s basketball program now that his NCAA sanctions have passed.

Joining Sampson in Houston is an impressive group of six junior college transfers, including local Houston recruit J.C. Washington, out of Jack Yates High School. Necessity is the mother of invention for Houston going forward, as they are replacing nine open roster spots with seven newcomers. It’s no easy task to accomplish, but it feels like just another walk in the park for a coach as accomplished as Sampson. It’s not all fire and brimstone left at Hofheinz Pavilion from last year’s squad – returning guards Jerrod Stiggers and L.J Rose were the third and fourth leading scorers, respectively, from a team last season that finished fourth in the AAC in scoring with 70.1 points per game.

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While that offense carried the team to 8 conference wins, the Coogs’ defense was to blame for many of their losses on the season, finishing in the lower half of most every defensive category in the AAC. Houston is losing some size in the middle from last season’s team, but Sampson is hoping to shore all of that up with incoming junior college transfers Egi Gjikondi and Devonta Pollard (6’9″ and 6’8″, respectively). Returning F Danrad Knowles, at 6-foot-10, is also an asset in the frontcourt for the Coogs, but he will need to step up his rebounding numbers as Houston’s leading rebounder from last season, TaShawn Thomas, now plays for Oklahoma.

It’s a lot that is still to be seen in Houston, but the program has the right man for the job, assuming Sampson learned from his mistakes while at Indiana and Oklahoma. Losing a head coach and nine players from a team is enough to give most programs a real run for their money, but most programs in that situation didn’t have an established coach like Kelvin Sampson stepping in to run things. There’s room for improvement for Houston going forward in 2014-15, but not that much. The team’s chemistry will need to solidify before the Coogs start really playing to their potential, but it is anyone’s guess as to when in the season that will happen. With all the new faces in the AAC, though, expect Houston to still notch a .500 or above record in conference play.

Projected Finish: 6th