Too much down time has UH up for games
In this season of postponements, finding a rhythm remains elusive
Abe Lemons, the longtime college basketball coach, used to say if you want to be the most popular person at the Final Four, jump on a coffee table in the hotel lobby and ask, “Who needs a home game?”
“I kind of feel like that’s what scheduling is right now,” University of Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said recently of a season that has been impacted at every corner by the coronavirus pandemic.
As March approaches, schools are gearing up for conference tournaments, followed by the NCAA Tournament. Before then, however, some schools are scrambling to find replacement games for postponements due to COVID-19.
“The only way we’re going to get better as a team this time of year is you have to play games,” Sampson said. “Right now, it’s so sporadic. Just one game a week, and you don’t know if the next game is going to get played until two days before. It’s just a blank show.”
Take Texas A&M, for instance. The Aggies will go 0-for-playing-in-February after an eighth consecutive game was canceled Wednesday.
Things are not as dire at UH, but in an effort to keep his team sharp and avoid a long layoff, Sampson quickly put together a Thursday nonconference game against Western Kentucky at Fertitta Center. No cakewalk, the Hilltoppers (15-4) are currently in first place in Conference USA’s East Division and feature likely first-round NBA draft pick Charles Bassey, a 6-11 center Sampson describes as “a monster.” They also can claim a December victory over Alabama, ranked sixth in the latest Associated Press poll.
At No. 6 in the latest NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) — a metric used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee — the Cougars (18-3) do not need a game to boost their postseason outlook (UH is a No. 3 seed in latest projections).
But by adding a game, UH avoids this nightmarish late-season scenario: After games against Memphis and East Carolina were postponed due to COVID-19 protocols, UH was in position to play just two games (a split against Wichita State and Cincinnati) during a 17-day span.
“You’re playing once a week in February,” Sampson said. “The importance of this game (against Western Kentucky) has nothing to do with anything but they’re good, we’re good. They wanted to play; we wanted to play. It’s so much
better than not playing a game this time of year. Everybody in every conference this time of year is gearing up for tournament play, whether it’s conference tournament or NCAA Tournament. There’s a routine there, a rhythm about January and February.”
Sampson said the season has been particularly difficult for younger players, who are not accustomed to so many practices and so few games. To help, Sampson scheduled a game against NAIA Our Lady of the Lake on Feb. 6, sitting his regular starters the entire game.
The lengthy layoffs have slowed the development of true freshmen Tramon Mark and Jamal
Shead. They’ve limited the opportunities for sophomore Marcus Sasser to work through a mini shooting slump. And now they present the challenge of finding minutes for forward Fabian White Jr., who has played in the last two games since his return from offseason knee surgery.
How unpredictable has scheduling been for UH? A game against Wichita State was moved up a week after both schools had cancellations, and a Feb. 21 game against Cincinnati was moved to Houston after the first meeting was postponed due to COVID-19, then almost moved back to Cincinnati following a winter storm in Texas.
“This has been a tough year. It really has,” Sampson said. “We’ve never been able to get into a rhythm. Eight days off this time of year is unheard of.”
UH had to deal with its own COVID-19 outbreak, a two-week layoff in December that forced the cancellation of three games. A fourth game against Central Florida was rescheduled for the day after Christmas, forcing the Cougars to play three straight road games.
Since then, four more games have been postponed. And all 11 AAC programs at some point have gone on pause, creating a backlog of games that still need makeup dates. Through Wednesday,
five AAC programs had played 10 or 11 league games, including conference leader Wichita State, with a week and a half left in the regular season. Meanwhile, UCF (16), UH (15) and Tulsa (15) have played a bulk of what was originally a 20-game round-robin format.
Wichita State currently holds a slim lead by percentage points — .818 to .800 — over UH.
“Some schools may only play 15 conference games,” Sampson said. “There are some schools that will play 18, some schools that will play 19. That’s just the way the season has been.”
There’s no certainty that more games won’t be impacted. The NCAA has announced that a positive COVID-19 test will not eliminate a team from its tournament.
Sampson prefers to take things one week at a time.
“We know for sure right now we’re going to play Western Kentucky on Thursday and play USF at home on Sunday,” he said. “After that I have no idea. We just have to wait and see.”