Shead carries forth point guard legacy
Three years ago, Bennie Seltzer, an assistant men’s basketball coach at Texas State, attended a preseason practice at the University of Houston.
He watched as coach Kelvin Sampson was particularly tough on a first-year player named Jamal Shead.
“I’m literally having flashbacks of my freshman year,” said Seltzer, an All-pacific 10 point guard for Sampson at Washington State in the early 1990s. “Coach was just riding him and riding him. He kicked him out of practice. Twice.”
Three decades later, nothing has changed. Sampson is still demanding, more so if you happen to play the point guard position. There’s a reason one of Sampson’s favorite lines is: “There are three people that can never have a bad day of practice: your point guard, your best player and the coach.”
From Donminic Ellison and Seltzer at Washington State, John Ontjes and Quannas White at Oklahoma, and Galen Robinson Jr., Dejon Jarreau and Shead at UH, Sampson point guards have all possessed similar traits.
Toughness. Leadership. Relentless defender. High basketball IQ. An unquenchable thirst to win.
“Different eras, but it still works,” said Robinson, often referred to as the “godfather” for his early role in helping build the Cougars into a national powerhouse. “Proof that the recipe hasn’t changed.”
As the Cougars, the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region, get set to play No. 16 seed Northern Kentucky in Thursday’s first round of the NCAA Tournament, the main storyline will be the health of All-american guard Marcus Sasser, who suffered a groin injury in the American Athletic Conference tournament. How far the Cougars advance, however, may depend on the play of Shead, a junior who is the unquestioned leader of the team.
“To be a point guard for Coach Sampson, you’ve got to be on what he’s on every day,” said Shead, the AAC’S defensive player of the year. “He never changes. He’s the same person every single day.”
Some of those days can test the limits.
“It’s very difficult, very hard, very uncomfortable, very demanding,” said Robinson, whose 103 wins from 2015-19 are third most for a player in UH history. “But (being the point guard) is also like a prestigious honor. You get trusted with something that is obviously bigger than yourself. You take it with a great sense of pride because he doesn’t just trust anyone with that responsibility.”
Sampson, who has led the Cougars to three 30-win seasons in the last five years, said he spends more time with his starting point guard than any other player, often watching film and discussing the game plan “to make sure we are on the same page.”
That on-court extension, Sampson’s former point guards said, is a critical part of the trust factor that develops over time.
“The old adage of the point guard is an extension of the head coach is probably true with Coach Sampson more than any coach I’ve ever been around,” said Seltzer, who just completed his third season as associate head coach at Texas State in San Marcos. “You have to literally think like him.”
Every game, Sampson said he counts on Shead to be his offensive coordinator in the first half, when the Cougars are on the opposite side of the court away from the bench.
“He has to know what the game plan is at a different level than the other players do,” Sampson said. “He has to understand who we are going to attack, what matchups we want.”
During timeouts, Sampson said he will ask Shead: “What did you see on this? He’ll say, ‘Here’s what I think,’ and I’ll say, ‘That’s good, let’s go with that.’ ”
White has had a front-row seat for how Sampson operates, first as the point guard during Oklahoma’s 2002 Final Four run and the last six seasons as an assistant coach at UH. Along with having an even-keel demeanor, White said what makes a Sampson-coached point guard successful is the ability to “set the table and let everyone else eat and then you eat last.” Seltzer had 473 assists during his career at Washington State, a record that still stands. Robinson had 578 assists in his four-year career, fourth-most in UH history, and Shead has 441 in three seasons.
“The only stat that every point guard that has played for coach, they all wanted to win first,” White said. “We didn’t care how many points we scored or how many assists we had. The only thing that mattered was whether we won or not. Those are the type of guys that coach has done an outstanding job of always having.”
Shead was thrust into a prominent role for the Cougars last season when guards Tramon Mark and Sasser were lost to season-ending injuries. Shead helped UH advance to the Elite Eight, posting 18 points against Illinois and 21 points against Arizona.
“Jamal probably wasn’t ready for that most of the year, but once we got to February and March, he took another step.”
After a 53-48 loss to UH in early December, Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett called Shead “the head of the snake” for the Cougars. Kellen Sampson, UH’S assistant coach and head coach-in-waiting, said Shead is “as natural a leader as we’ve ever had.”
Shead said Kelvin Sampson has allowed him to grow into a leadership role.
“He just let it come naturally,” Shead said.
It’s also helped, Shead said, to spend countless hours watching film and going through practice with White and learning from Jarreau and asking for input during Robinson’s frequent visits back to campus.
“Coach Q, him being there and him living it, he’s already done it,” said Shead, who has averaged 5.4 assists and 1.8 steals while playing a team-high 32 minutes per game. “I listen to him because he’s done what I’m trying to do.”
Once trust has been built, the former point guards said, it’s “one of the most rewarding feelings,” Robinson said.
Three years later, Seltzer, keeping track of the Cougars from afar, said Shead has developed into a “phenomenal leader.”
And the lessons learned as a point guard under Sampson remain valuable to this day.
“It helped me even today as a 52-year-old man,” Seltzer said. “Being able to endure that as a freshman, life hasn’t been so hard.”