Houston Freshman Kingston Flemings Flashes Star Burst, Sparks Early Cougars Hype

Seemingly every year, a freshman who was under the radar coming into the season (wasn't getting a ton of hype, wasn't a 1st rounder in the pre-season mock drafts) exceeds expectations, rises up the rankings and becomes a 1st round pick (Brice Sensabaugh, Malaki Branham, Blake Wesley, Taylor Hendricks, Rob Dillingham, Jeremiah Fears) or even a top 5 pick (Reed Sheppard).

This year, my pick is Kingston Flemings.

Despite being a 4-star recruit on a Houston team that has a pair of 5-stars (Chris Cenac Jr. and Isiah Harwell), Flemings has emerged as the freshman on the team getting the most playing time, is producing the most and showing he's the most ready to contribute for a team with hopes of winning a national championship.

Flemings was solid in the Cougars exhibition vs Mississippi State and in their opener vs Lehigh, but his coming out party was this past Saturday vs Towson. Flemings (in just his second official college game) went off for 20 points (8/10 from the field, 3/3 from the free throw line) to go with 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 0 fouls. He led the team in scoring, as Houston won by 17.

Here's some clips of his performance vs Towson. Especially impressive is the play at :31 when Flemings shows the ability to create space and hit the side step 3-pointer.

Coming into the season, I was tempering my expectations of Flemings for a few reasons. First off, Houston had a veteran backcourt led by seniors Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp, so I figured that those guys would run the backcourt and Flemings would just get some minutes here and there off the bench and it wouldn't be until the 26-27 season (with Uzan and Sharp graduated) that Flemings would start getting a chance to really shine.

Plus I figured that more off the backcourt minutes for a freshman would go to 5-star recruit Harwell, rather than the 4-star, Flemings.

Also, I was a little skeptical about how good Flemings would be and how much he'd play this season since he was listed at just 170 lbs.

Flemings has answered both of those questions already, though. He has started all 3 of Houston's games (including the exhibition vs Mississippi State), averaging 28.6 minutes per game over those 3 contests. And he said that since arriving on campus, he's gained about 20 lbs and is now around 190 lbs.

Despite packing on the 20 lbs, Flemings is still in great shape and posted a very impressive (4th best on the team) time in the mile run:

Flemings has even gotten the stamp of approval from the most recent standout point guard to play at Houston and go on to the NBA.

All of this has sent me down a rabbit hole. I've been going back through some of Flemings film (both at Houston and from his high school days), looking at some of his stats and reexamining my evaluation of him as a prospect in the 2026 NBA Draft.

Here's one play which has really stood out - it's arguably the filthiest game winner by anyone in the this draft class. Going against Dynamic Prep (the runner up for the Chipotle National Championship), it was tied up 86-86. Flemings holds for the last shot. Then goes by his man, gets into the paint, plays off 2 feet, rises up & throws down the dunk to give his team the lead with 0.3 seconds left. He had 44 points this game - in a 32 minute high school game - vs the 2nd best team in the country.

Flemings also hit this game winning buzzer beater - a 3-pointer on the AAU circuit in 2024 for SA Future.

Here's another impressive jump shot. Late in the game, his team was up by 5 vs a team led by Eli Ellis (now a freshman at South Carolina). Flemings comes off a high screen. He reads the defense and sees he has enough space to get the shot off so he pulls up off the dribble and hits the 3. It's a dagger to put his team up by 8. From there, they cruise to the win.

Here's a look at the recent shooting numbers for Flemings:

The FT% being that high is certainly encouraging for his long term shooting projection. The volume of 3PA/game is also a solid number which is also an indicator that he'll be a respectable shooter long term. And while the 3 FG% might seem low, we only think it's low because we know that the average 3 FG% in the NBA is 36%. But that's the NBA, where the average age is 26 and most of those shot attempts are from guys with 3+ years of experience in the league (guys like Seth Curry and Klay Thompson).

Average 3 FG% for guys who are draft prospects actually closer to 31%. And for high usage ball handlers (especially ones who are only age 18/19) anything that is 30% or better is solid. So that 32.6% number for Flemings is actually good.

Flemings best attribute might be his burst. His lightning quick with the ball in his hands in the open floor and in the half court. That means he can make plays with the ball, using his blazing speed as we saw when he blew by his defender for the game winning dunk vs Dynamic Prep.

Here's some other plays where we see his burst when attacking the basket. On the last play in particular, we don't often see guards who are 6'3" or taller with this level of explosiveness an coordination at such a young age - except for guys like Russell Westbrook or De'Aaron Fox. What's also impressive about Flemings though is how he plays with pace - on some of these clips goes fast but not so fast that he loses the ball or is wild / out of control. He's fast while still maintaining control and making the play finishing at the rim, etc.

Flemings also uses that burst to create shots for teammates, as we see here in a play from the game vs Lehigh.

And on these plays as well where Flemings uses burst combined with his ability to read the defense, play with good passing feel and unselfishness:

On the defensive end, Flemings combines that burst with a high motor, tenacity, effort, positioning and instincts to make plays and disrupt the opposing team's offense as we see here vs Mississippi State:

And here as well - yes Cooper Flagg is the player Flemings steals the ball from in the first clip:

It's very rare for a guard prospect with this level of burst to also be this good as a shooter and as a defender - while also having respectable positional size.

Here's a chart that shows some recent guard prospects who had exceptional burst along with how good they were as a pre-draft prospect in other areas:

The biggest thing that stands out to me from the chart is that out of 18 prospects, only 2 of them were good shooting prospects - Flemings and Tyrese Maxey. And with Maxey, calling him a good shooting prospect is somewhat of a reach, since he only shot 29% from 3 in college. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt, since his 3PA volume was good, his FT% was very good, his mechanics were good, he shot well in high school and often times guards who play for Coach Calipari are better than their college stats indicate.

Flemings though is a better defender than Maxey and probably has better passing / feel than Maxey. They are pretty similar in terms of size and shooting ability but Flemings might be a slightly better shooting prospect and slightly taller.

A lot of smaller (6'3" and under) guard prospects have trouble finishing around the rim but that's really not much of an issue for Flemings either. Flemings does get blocked near the basket on occasion but also has some impressive finishes, as we see here:

Flemings even has an in between game:

When you factor all of this in and you also consider that Flemings is one of the younger prospects in this draft class (he's still just 18 years old - won't turn 19 until January) yet he's in the starting lineup and playing well right from the beginning of the season on a Houston team that's currently ranked no. 1 in the country in the latest AP poll.

When you add it all up and you compare all of it to the other prospects in this draft class, it adds up to Flemings being a top 10 pick on my current draft big board.

He's definitely a freshman to watch this season on a Cougars team with its sights set on a national championship, under Head Coach Kelvin Sampson.