Cavs guard Hauser was born to shoot
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Dave and Stephanie Hauser knew what they had on their hands with their oldest son almost from the beginning. Barely old enough to walk when he started hoisting a round ball at a cylinder, Sam Hauser’s first sentence announced his intentions.
Out of the mouth of a babe who wasn’t quite two years old, seldom have words been more prescient.
“The first two-word sentence that Sam ever put together was ‘Me shooty,’” Stephanie Hauser said. “He had a little tiny hoop with a Nerf ball.”
She might have even seen the ability in their living room before Dave did.
“I said, ‘Dave, look at his followthrough when he shoots his little Nerf ball,’ ” Stephanie Hauser said. “It was unbelievable. I said, ‘Did you teach him that?’ He said, ‘I’ve never taught him anything.’ ”
If Sam Hauser had never spoken another sentence, “me shooty” might have been the most apt description of his mindset. Scoring 1,646 points in his college career thus far, which featured three seasons at Marquette and this season at Virginia while shooting 44.5% from 3-point range, he was indeed born to shoot.
Though the 6-foot-8 redshirt senior forward has played just one season in Charlottesville, where he
earned first-team All-ACC honors while averaging a team-high 15.8 points per game and shooting 51.7% from the floor and 44.4% from beyond the 3-point line, U.Va. coach Tony Bennett places him in elite company.
“Of course, he’s up there as one of the best, but you think about … I’ve had the privilege to coach Klay (Thompson) and Joe (Harris), Malcolm (Brogdon), Kyle Guy,” Bennett said. “You can start going down the list and it’s like, ‘Whoa,’ but I’m so proud of Sam.”
Getting his shots in was never a problem for young Sam Hauser.
Sam, his younger brother, Joey, and their sister, Nicki, spent their winter afternoons as elementary kids hanging out at basketball practices conducted by their dad, who was the coach at Winneconne (Wisconsin) High. Outfitted in Winneconne practice jerseys that hung to their knees, the Hauser kids took part in layup drills with the team as soon as they were old enough to handle a youth-sized ball.
Sam wanted to do more than just shoot layups. He had to work on his jumper.
“It came pretty natural to me at a young age,” said Hauser, who leads ACC tournament top seed U.Va. (17-6, 13-4 ACC) into today’s quarterfinal matchup in Greensboro, North Carolina, against No. 8 seed Syracuse. “I knew I was pretty good at (shooting) from a young age. I just kind of kept getting better as I got older.”
The Hauser brothers always had a strong connection on the floor as teammates — playing together from Sam’s third-grade year until he graduated from Stevens Point Area Senior High in Wisconsin and then for a season at Marquette. When Dave Hauser told third-grader Sam he had to pass the ball to somebody other than his first-grade brother in youth games, Sam responded as honestly as he could.
“He said, ‘But dad, I want to win,’ ” Dave Hauser said.
Sam did a lot of winning through high school, losing only four games throughout his career. He went on to Marquette, where he started 97 games in three seasons and earned second-team All-Big East honors as a junior and was followed two years later by his brother.
For reasons Dave Hauser said the brothers prefer to keep to themselves, Joey and Sam decided to leave Marquette two years ago. Joey opted to transfer to Michigan State, where he’s averaging 9.9 points and 5.9 rebounds per game as a 6-9 redshirt junior, while Sam felt comfortable at U.Va., but it was a heartrending process.
“It was excruciating to watch the boys go through the realization that they were possibly going to split,” said Stephanie Hauser, who is an assistant director with the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. “They really struggled with that. It was really painful for them. They didn’t want to accept the fact that they both liked a place a little better than the other. For Dave and I, it was not a surprise. We actually encouraged them to think about it. They were the ones that said, ‘Nope. We’re going together, we’re going together.’”
All of the Bennett connections and roots in Wisconsin helped Sam make his decision.
Stephanie Hauser’s brother played AAU basketball with Tony Bennett, a Clintonville, Wisconsin, native who went to high school in Stevens Point. Dave Hauser still bears the mental scars from high school basketball games he played against Bennett.
“I used to get my (rear end) kicked by Tony in high school when they played us,” said Dave Hauser, who is now athletic director and a physical education teacher at P.J. Jacobs Junior High in Stevens Point, where he said Tony Bennett spent his ninthgrade year. “I figured we might as well send somebody (to U.Va.) and join him.”
Tony’s dad, Dick Bennett, and uncle, Jack Bennett, both coached at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. U.Va. assistant coach Brad Soderberg went to Pacelli High in Stevens Point.
It didn’t take Sam Hauser long to get comfortable in the ACC. He came up short in voting for ACC Player of the Year, but he has other aspirations.
He never got beyond the Big East tournament semifinals or the first round of the NCAA tournament at Marquette. A much deeper postseason run remains on his to-do list.
“I don’t really look too far into it,” Sam Hauser said regarding ACC Player of the Year voting. “I think (Georgia Tech’s) Moses Wright deserved the award . ... I just try to do what I can to help us win. If that means me being the Player of the Year, then that’s what came with it, but it didn’t. I’m OK. We won the conference. I’ll take that.”