[MUSIC PLAYING] It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. The Houston Cougars had no problem adjusting to the Big 12 in year one last year. What might Kelvin Sampson's crew have in store for year two? You are locked on college basketball. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. What's up, folks? Welcome in to the Lockdown College Basketball Podcast, a daily national college hoop show, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm your host, Andy Patton, and you're joining us at the place to get your college basketball content every single day, five days a week, 52 weeks out of the year in the middle of the offseason. We're still talking college basketball here. Folks want to thank you all for making the show your first listen or your first watch of the day. Remind you to join us on our Lockdown College Basketball Discord channel if you have not done so yet. There's a link in the show notes. It is free to join. We're talking college hoops all the time. Today's episode of Lockdown College Basketball is brought to you by Game Time. Folks, download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on college. And you'll get $20 off your first purchase. Well, I am joined today by Parker Ainsworth, the host of the Lockdown Cougs Podcast. We're talking Houston Cougars basketball today, part of our team preview series for those of you who have been listening to the show throughout the month. We have already done quite a few of these team previews. We talked Kentucky and Kansas. We talked Gonzaga, Alabama, Iowa State, Creighton, Baylor. And then recently, we talked about the pair of powerhouse ACC programs, Duke and North Carolina. If you want to get caught up, there's a playlist on YouTube with every single one of the team preview episodes. We're also doing conference previews as well. We are right in the thick of preview season. And I'm very excited to be joined by my friend Parker to talk about this Houston club. And the big question last year, Parker, around this time, was kind of what Houston would look like adjusting to the Big 12. Obviously, conference realignment has been a huge storyline for the last couple of years. It's back rear in its ugly head right now with the Pac 12 coming back into the mix. And in fact, pursuing some teams from that American athletic conference, and if people are worried that teams like Memphis or Tulane or whomever could might struggle to adjust, look no further than what Kelvin Samson and Houston did last year because they jumped from the AAC to the Big 12. And they didn't even miss a beat. They went 15 and 3 in the strongest college basketball conference in the country last year. In the Big 12, they earned a number one seed. They did it for a second straight year. Their strength of schedule, according to sportsreference.com, basically doubled. Their schedule was twice as hard last year, and they still earned a one seed, still had a tremendous season. Parker, as somebody who covered the team last year, who was kind of covering them through that transition into the Big 12, were you surprised to see them have that level of success? Or did you, knowing just Samson and the way that he operates, did you kind of expect to see them continue to dominate the way that they have? I think academically, I would say yes. The fan in me was not. We win every game. But there was part of me that knew that there was a challenge. And I would stress that you did a great job of summarizing. The part you left out is they lost two guys in the first run of the NBA draft the year before. And that was two starters. Mark Sasser has been a multi-year starter, all-conference, all-American. G.S. Walker, the one-and-done five-star freshman. They lost both of them, and then into the Big 12. And then they won the regular season by two full games. They ran out of steam in the conference tournament. But on the whole, I'd say that's more successful than the analyst in me would have thought. Samson's got something going, man. And it seems to translate no matter who they're playing against, where they're playing, how they're playing. It's just the culture of the program. Yeah, and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about too, is like, I think for Samson, this is just powerful the course. I mean, he's made 20 appearances in the NCAA tournament in his career. A couple of them got wiped out by some allegations at this point wouldn't even be illegal in college athletics a long time ago when he was at Wazoo. But this is somebody who just, wherever he's been, whether he's coaching in this conference, this team, this program, this side of the country, it doesn't matter that his teams are hard-nosed, they're tough, they're physical, and they don't back down from a challenge. And I think with the benefit of hindsight, of course, they were gonna come in and have that success. And they kind of established it right away, picked up some big wins. Do you and I were talking before we hit the record button, like Houston didn't get a favorable schedule in year one. I thought they had to play some really tough games, some tough road games, and didn't even seem to phase them at all. They, like you said, they replaced two starters, two lottery picks. They go out and get a huge big-time addition in L.J. Cryer. Jamal Shed steps up into a massive role for this team, but they just kind of steamrolled their way into the conference and yeah, Kansas was down and had some injury stuff towards the end of the year. But this was still a really deep, really strong conference and it just didn't even seem to bother them whatsoever. Now, we did run into some problems when we get in the NCAA tournament and two years in a row, unfortunately for Houston, we've seen injuries kind of rear their ugly head at really inopportune times. Last year we had the Jamal Shed injury, which helped lead to that loss to Duke. The year before that, I know Marcus Sasser had dealt with some injury stuff, kind of come into that tournament as well. And so you're looking at a team that has earned a one seed in back-to-back years, but hasn't advanced as far as the expectations were for those last couple of years. Now they went to the final four in 2021, they went to the Elite Eight in 2022, so it's not like the tournament success hasn't been there recently. But I'm starting like, what has this success that this team has had kind of elevated the expectation for this program of, hey, we're, you know, Sweet 16's not good enough anymore. We need to be in the Elite Eight, we need to be in the final four and we'll talk more about this specific roster later in the show. But it almost feels like Samson's success has now like elevated how the fan base expects him to perform and puts even more pressure on this team. - Yeah, I think that's a well put point. The truth is, is that there was kind of a starving feeling for good basketball. You had Faislam and JAMA in the '80s. I don't mean to say the history wasn't there. You had some good teams even in the early '90s that think people kind of forget about. But then there was this is long, when the Southwest Conference fell apart, Houston kind of fell out of the money game. The CUSA days were kind of lost in a lot of ways. And so there was part of it. Those first several years, you mentioned they made five Sweet 16's in a row at this point. Like they were just happy to be in the dance, let alone in the Sweet 16, right? And I think you're kind of alluding to it's like, okay, like, you know, let's get back. That final four thing was nice. Let's get back to that, right? 2023 was a big, you know, let down emotionally, I think, because the final four was in Houston. And so the thought of like, if you can get the final four, then you're playing basically, it's not your home floor, but you're playing at home, right? And what that could have done, obviously, Marcus Sasser's groin injury, he played through it, but he was not himself, right? Last season, you got a pretty favorable draw. I would argue in the actual bracket itself. And Jamal Shed turns an ankle into a game. He loses that game by a whopping three points, even though he didn't have it for most of it, right? I think that it feels like a couple of strokes of bad luck. And I do think people understand that, but also like at some point, you got to worry about depth. And we'll get to this year's team in a second, like 2023, they basically played like six and a half guys. - Yeah. - 2024 was a little bit better, but they had injuries, Taladab, Jojo, Tugla went down. So by the time they got to the tournament, it was also not very deep. I think they've looked at this roster for this year as a little bit better than that. I think that's also raised expectations, like you're saying. - That's a perfect transition to this, because as we talked about, they went into the big 12 having replaced two players who were selected in the NBA draft this year. Yeah, they lost Jamal Shed, and we're going to talk about that because that's a massive loss. But Houston returned to the other four starters from last year's team. They also got a potential breakout candidate back from an injury in Terrence Arsono. We're going to talk about that and how Samson's going to put all these pieces together, because I agree, I think this team might be even deeper and potentially more talented than last year's team. So we're going to talk about how those pieces might all come together for this Houston team coming up in just a second. The first book, let's talk about Fandal, because you've heard us talk a lot about Fandal America's number one sports book. Usually this summer, we've been filling you in on how to get a boost or a bonus offer from Fandal. However, we have something a little bit different for you today. Now through September 22nd, all Fandal customers can bet $5 and get a three-week free trial of NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Then with a YouTube TV base plan, you'll be able to watch every regular season Sunday afternoon out of market game. All you need is a Google account and a current form of payment, and you can cancel anytime. So you got $5 Houston currently plus 1600 odds to take home the national championship in 2025. So you get 80 bucks directly in your pocket if that happens. So you just got to throw $5 down, visit Fandal.com/lockdown now to download America's number one sports book. Today's episode of Lockdown College Basketball is also brought to you by Game Time, folks, going to live events. It's the absolute best. Whether it's music, sports, theater, comedy, and now we got college football, back college basketball following suit in just over a month. I am looking forward to making so many new memories. This college sports season and great news. When you're getting tickets for this year, Game Time has a new feature called Game Time Picks that makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier. Game Time Picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats. So you don't have to waste your time searching through thousands of different tickets. 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And as we talked about in that first segment there, this is a team that returned a ton of talent. It's a team that didn't have a ton of off-season moves. And you kind of expect that with the Kelvin-Samson team, we've seen a lot of like some of those veteran programs out there that aren't doing a lot of roster movement year over year. Certainly the Big 12 has had quite a few teams that have turned over the rosters in big ways. Kansas made a lot of moves. Baylor brought in some big time players, but Iowa State is another team similar to Houston that kind of kept the majority of the group together. And I'm very interested, looking ahead to next year, how those teams that have more continuity are going to do. Because for Houston here, again, Joel Shedd's gone, but L.J. Cryer's back, Emmanuel Sharpe is back, Joanne Francis is back, Javier Francis is back. Is that how you say it? Xavier, Javier Francis? - Sam's himself says it, JV Air. - JV Air. - We're a trust handsome on that, I guess. - Yeah, for better or worse, I guess. - For better or worse, right. The team also returns Terrence Arsenault, and he's a guy who averaged about five and a half points, four and a half boards per game last year. That was only in 11 games before coming down with the injury. He had a really promising freshman year, and I think he's a guy that, depending on how ready he is to contribute in a major way for this team, I think is a fairly big X factor for where this Houston team's kind of ceiling ends up kind of lying, because there's not a lot of newcomers on this team. Arsenault's not a newcomer per se, but a guy who I think could kind of raise the ceiling in a significant way. You also get back Malik Wilson, a veteran guard, you get back Joe Tugler in the front court. You got some other guys coming back as well. And Parker, we can talk about the returners, but I also want to emphasize the departures here, because Ryan Elvin was kind of a bit player, not a huge loss necessarily. Damian Dunn was a pretty good player. He transfers to Pitt. He's gonna be a contributor for that Panthers team in the ACC, but obviously the big loss is Jamal Shad, a guy who ended up getting selected in the second round of the NBA draft. I was so happy to see him get that recognition and was gonna be fairly frustrated if he didn't, because he was clearly good enough to be an NBA player and a guy who, you don't just lose his production on the court. It feels like there's more that kind of goes into losing a player like Jamal Shad, especially for a coach like Samson, who values that kind of tenacity and veteran leadership and workhorse mentality that Shad really seemed to encapsulate kind of perfectly throughout his career in Houston. - Yeah, and it's fun rallying off those names and realizing we also, in the first segment, forgot that they lost from on Mark the transfer portal, 'cause I was thinking in my head about like how remarkable it is that none of those guys ended up leaving. The truth is that you don't lose three starters off of a team like that. That was number one in the country for a period of time and get back to that place that a guy like Jamal Shad, right? He's gotta be there to kind of keep it all even and steady. He wasn't all American. He was comfortable with the year, conference events player of the year, et cetera, and the big 12. You mentioned second round picked Toronto Messiah's year. He's pretty good at that. So I think he knows what he's doing there. But I think the biggest thing though is after he got hurt, he got hurt in the Sweet 16 game, like I said, in the first few minutes, it was like seventh minute or something like that of the game. And afterwards, Samson, they were talking to him, some reporter asked him then. And a very honest question about like, could Elle J. Krier have played point guard or just something generic, right? And Samson was just like, you can't just replace him. Like it's not, this is not like we just put it in our backup point guard and it's a little bit less. It's like there's more to it than that. He gets a big put back dunk as A&M the second round game at a glorified 5-11, let's be honest, right? Like he's covering their best guy, running our offense. If we need to get 30, if we need to get 12 assists, get 12 assists, right, he does all the things. And it is only one guy in the starting lineup and only, you know, David doesn't play a lot in some games, not a lot in others. But one guy had a major rotation across all 38 games. But it is a lot more than one guy in a lot of other ways. Like you said, he's a big part of the culture. And if we're being honest, I bet his numbers hanging in Fertitas and are very simple. You know, I think it should be without a doubt. And you look at this team, they lose shed and done and Elvin, like we said, but they got some exciting guys coming in, the main name, the most notable guy in terms of, I think, playing time in year one, who's a newcomer is going to be Milos Uzon here, coming over from Oklahoma transfer. Average about 9.4 and a half assists for game last year. Good defender, really kind of a prototypical Kelvin Sampson type guard. I mean, you just, while you watch the tape on him, you watch the Oklahoma games, you're like, okay, that guy's going to fit. And Houston system quite nicely. And I think he's expected to be a big time contributor for this team right away. And then you get the two freshmen who are coming in, Mercy Miller, four star guard, 55th ranked player in the class at two, four, seven sports. I actually saw quite a bit of Mercy Miller in high school because he was teammates with Dusty Stromer, who ended up going to Gonzaga. And since I was covering Gonzaga, that's a kid I've seen a lot of, and he's going to be a great fit for Kelvin Sampson and the Cougs as well. And they also get Chase McCarty, a top 100 prospect behind the class four star small forward. And so you're looking at these three newcomers and I think based on Sampson's history, you don't typically see freshmen play a ton of minutes. And considering how many guys are returning at the kind of two, three spots for this Houston team, I wouldn't project that the two freshmen play a ton of minutes for this team right away, but there's a lot of upside with those two guys. And then you get a guy in Newson who's going to play a big role, if not starting at least a very big role for this team right away. So maybe not a ton of players coming in, maybe not as flashy as players as you get at like, you know, Baylor's bringing in Norchado Mir and Jeremy Roach, but Houston's adding the kind of guys that fit Kelvin Sampson system at the end of the day. I'm not questioning that that system's working because clearly it is for Houston. - Well, and like we mentioned, they brought back four of the five starters and a lot of the bench as well. So I don't mean to sound cocky or presumptuous, but they were pretty darn good a year ago and they bring out most of that roster. I think that's why you don't need to go get a whole lot, right? And I think that's kind of the sentiment from the fan base. I do think Milo is going to be an important ad. I think when they got Cryer a year ago, they're hoping he'd kind of grow into more of a point guard. They've relied on him a lot more of the two guard. So, Newson, he's going to do a lot of the running of the offense and stuff like that. He had a couple of different roles at Oklahoma based on a couple different teams he was with there. I think the biggest thing is that he fits the culture because he's a big, long, and then scrappy as all get out guard, right? He can get dirty with anybody. - Yeah, and I think that's kind of the question here because like you said, four or five starters are coming back. L.J. Cryer is going to start. Sharp's going to start. Robert's Francis, those guys are going to start. Your fifth spot probably is going to Newson. I think there's maybe Terrence Arsono completely pops off and he gets that spot. I think that the consensus is going to be Newson because you need a point guard and L.J. Cryer is pretty familiar with kind of playing off the ball. That's what he did last year. That's what he did at Baylor. And so it strikes me as like, if you want to keep Cryer in the role that he's best at, that he's excelled at, that you would have Milos kind of step into that starting point guard role. Again, he averaged four and a half assists per game for Oklahoma team last year. That was pretty good, at least in the first half of the year to kind of fade it down the stretch. But to me, that kind of stands out as the most likely outcome here as, I mean, again, you're not replacing Jamal Shed. We'll use the money ball term. You got to replace him in the aggregate. You can't just replace him. Well, completely. But I think the starting spot that L.J. Cryer, excuse me, that Shed vacated is going to go to the Oklahoma Transfer News on here. And I think he's going to fit nicely and with some extra depth coming off the bench, especially with Arsono Health. See, it feels like that is enough to be able to kind of keep this team afloat despite losing a really valuable piece of this program in Shed. Well, in bringing back Arsono, he has made 100% recovery. So I don't mean this in a way that says he has. And I hope no one takes that way. But he did tear his Achilles last year in December, right? It is a fairly significant injury. And so throwing him out there for 32 minutes a night might not be the best in anyone's interest anyway, right? So bringing him off the bench is a rotational wing. He and Manuel Sharpe actually, both the two guards had bring off the bench in their freshman year, then Latcha looked like that Arsono was going to kind of be the sixth man before he went down. And so I think that that's kind of his comfortable role in bringing him back healthy. Let's bring him back comfortably as well. I think that fits really well as the first guard off the bench this year. Yeah, and I think that's, the fact that Arsono and Sharpe, it kind of felt like they were on a similar trajectory. And you look at how Sharpe finished the year. I mean, if you think Arsono can be even 85%, that kind of caliber player, like that's a tremendous addition to the second unit, to the rotation here for this team. And I think, you know, looking at the rest of it, Malik Wilson is going to be a rotation guy like he's been. Tugler is going to be that kind of third rotational big. You got a couple other guys, maybe the freshmen play kind of bit roles, maybe they red shirt. I know that's something that we've seen Kelvin Sampson do in the past. But my last question to you before we move on to talk a little bit about Houston's schedule and some projections for how we think they're going to do this year is who we kind of think this team's X factor is. And we've talked a lot about Arsono, and maybe that is the guy that we go with. We've obviously talked a lot about Cryer, and I don't know, he's kind of more like the star player. I don't know if he's the X factor necessarily. But it feels like there's some guys who really raised the ceiling of this team if they can kind of pop and play at a level that maybe higher than they did last year or somebody who can kind of really raise the ceiling of this program. Is anybody who just kind of stands out to you in that area? So I got a couple of answers to him. I had my first name, thanks statistically, is going to be a manual. Manual is, manual sharp is going to be a junior this year. And I guess he's technically a red shirt. He tore up his leg, major injury senior high school. And actually he actually graduated early and came in mid-year and took it as a red shirt freshman year, the second half of his year, would have been a senior high school. Instead of going to prom, he came to work out coach Allen Bishop. He's gotten in a lot better shape each year. He's had, you mentioned tremendous growth. There were games last year where they fell in Jamolshad to just kind of go get a bucket 'cause they needed something. And I think Cryer, like he mentioned, is an off-ball score. He's really good at movement without the ball, but that's not really what they're looking for in those moments. Sharp is a guy that's broad shoulders, strong attacks. 63, 210, I don't mean to be a homer, but if you were 65, this guy, we were talking about NBA first round, like he's that kind of a scorer. And so, I think that he'll be the guy you see feeling a lot of those kind of roles. - Yeah. - Joe and Roberts, as the culture guy, he's been around there forever, right? And so he'll be, I think, a leader in a locker room and off the court kind of stuff, but Sharp's the guy to keep an eye on if you're looking for point spreads and that kind of stuff. - Well, Houston won the big 12 in year one, like we talked about. This year, though, while they got four starters back, we got a lot of excitement about this Houston team. We also saw a Kansas team completely reload in the transfer portal. We saw Baylor make some huge additions. We talked about Iowa State returning most of their talent. And now Arizona is in the mix as a potential challenger for a top spot in the big 12. So we're gonna talk about, it might be a tougher path for Kelvin Sampson and the Cougs to repeat what they did last year, but can they do it again? And if so, what does that mean for their potential to bring home a championship or at least bring back a final four appearance in 2025? Excuse me, we're gonna get to that in just a second. First folks, let's talk about today's new sponsor, Roy. Hey college basketball fans, have you heard about Roy? It stands for return on you and it's a new platform that lets you the fans get involved in NIL like never before by making contributions directly to your favorite athletes. By supporting players directly, you can help shape rosters, retain talent and keep your favorite athletes out of the transfer portal. NILS changed the game for athletes. Roy changes the NIL game for fans. Why use Roy? You get exclusive content access. When fans contribute to a successful campaign, they receive access to exclusive content from the athletes such as their announcement decision, behind the scenes footage and other personal reflections. So download Roy for iOS or Android and enter referral code locked on and you'll automatically be entered into a sweep states to win $5,000 cash. Visit joinroy.com for additional details. No purchase necessary, void where prohibited. Get the Roy app for iOS or Android and start making an impact on your favorite team. Use that referral code locked on for an opportunity to win $5,000 cash. Visit joinroy.com for more details. All right Parker, closing out the show and our Houston season preview here as we're about seven weeks away from the start of the college basketball season. I wanna talk a little bit scheduling for Houston right now. Talk about their non-conference schedule. Talk a little bit about how we think they're gonna do in what I expect to still be one of, if not the very best conference in college basketball, this upcoming season in the big 12 and talk about whether this team's gonna get themselves back on that one seed line for a third straight year and how they might do in the big dance. Let's start with that non-conference schedule. We got an exhibition game against Texas A&M on the 27th of October. Always fun to see those exhibition games against marquee opponents. And then the home slate for Houston in this non-conference. You've got Jackson State, Louisiana, Hofstra, Butler, Troy, Toledo, and Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. And then in the neutral site games, you have Auburn. We talked about that game a little bit earlier. Auburn in Houston at the Toyota Center. Isaac and I have talked a lot about on this show about how excited we are to see more marquee games coming to the first week of the college basketball season. Something that doesn't happen all that often we saw this game, Gonzaga and Baylor are working on a game. I think Baylor and Arkansas are playing in the first week too. We got some actual good basketball coming in the first week of the season and Auburn in Houston is gonna be a great one. And then we of course have the new players era NIL festival, which there's been a little bit of controversy about that, but it sounds like it's happening. It's going forward. We have a map for that. Houston's gonna play Alabama. That's gonna be a tremendous game. They also play Notre Dame and Rutgers. Those games will be in Las Vegas over Feast Week. I think they're the 26th, 27th and then the 30th. And there's like a weird gap in the games for that event. - Get on time for Turkey. Time for Turkey. - Yeah, exactly. Give it everybody folks. Time to digest for a few days before going back to that final game. But Parker, one of the things that stood out to me, and this is not uncommon for any team, especially a team of Houston's level, but there's no true road games in the non-conference slate. It's the first true road game that Houston will play in this upcoming season will be in the in-conference play in the big 12. And I am a proponent of thinking that playing true road games helps teams. And I think the more you can do that, the better, but I also know, as somebody who follows Gonzaga, it takes two to tango. You may wanna schedule a home game or a home and home series where you're gonna go on the road, but if somebody doesn't wanna schedule that with you, it's a little bit more challenging. Is it concerned you that Houston doesn't have any true road games or do you think it's something that it's gonna iron itself out in-conference play anyway? - Well, and this is totally me being a homer on this part, but I would also say that it would take a special person to invite Houston to come play them, right? Like, to go play at someone's place, I think you're asking for a lot there. Houston's very rough and physical. And that, you know, that's just Kelvin, SAMHSA style of basketball. As far as like, do I wish that from a, like getting to know this team, knowing what we've got, knowing how we behave and how we act and those kind of things and those environments without Jamal shed, absolutely. I wish we saw some sort of a test like that. Auburn being a at Toyota Center game, I think will be interesting because Toyota Center is big relative to the Fertita and it also is in conjunction with another game. I believe it's Rice and somebody. - Rice and Florida State, yeah. - And so there will be other fans in the stadium. So it might feel more neutral-ish, like frankly, Rice fans will probably move to Houston in some regards, right? And so that'll be interesting. As far as the level of competition goes, I don't know, you know, obviously there's some people to play a lot more of the marquee matchups. There's like a handful of teams that play another two or three of those. But as I said that, I'd say that really Houston's doing all right and from a talent they see perspective, they see Auburn, they see Alabama. So it's two SEC Notre Dame and Rutgers, other power conferences, Butler and the Big East Challenge. They luck this year that's coming to Houston. So I think that's on the whole, right? There are things to complain about, but I do think they'll be fairly well tested. Even, you know, we haven't seen the big 12 schedule come out. I guess you can end up in fog out on the start. Now it'd be pretty rough for anybody, but that would be rough. You could play all road games and that would still be rough to start the season, right? - Yeah, I don't dislike this guy. I've seen a lot worse schedules. Even like the buy games that they have, like Hofstra's had success recently, Troy and Toledo are not bad programs. Like I think this is a decent non-conference schedule for Houston here. And I think I personally would like to see more road games for most teams in the non-conference late, but there's not a lot of incentive to do it right now. So a lot of teams are just not choosing to do that. And certainly if you're any big 12 team and it certainly Houston among them, you just don't have to worry about it 'cause you know you're gonna get a ton of marquee games in conference play. And that's kind of how I want to close out the show. This team went 15 and three in the league last year. And without knowing all the specific matchups and everything, it's obviously hard to project, but this is a team that has a lot of continuity that has had just tremendous amounts of success under Coach Samson. And while I think Kansas is better, I think Baylor is probably better. I think Iowa State's the same, maybe a little bit better. And then you add Arizona and like that alone is a tremendous, tremendous top five in this conference. And the fact that I'm feeling like a Kansas State roster that I truly love that I think is really good is pretty clearly sixth at best in this conference is a testament to the depth and talent in this league. And I think it's gonna be an absolute grind night in a night out. But the question for you, Parker is fairly simple. And again, without all the information that we have, 15 and three last year, do you think that this is a team that's capable of replicating that? And being in that same position or around that, heading into this upcoming season? - I think the unfortunate thing for a fan is gonna be they could be as good or better and not be 15 and three, right? I think the truth is that it's a tough conference. You added some good teams. I bet the conference, I know they're off to 16 teams now. I bet the conference has nine teams in the tournament this year. It's that kind of a deep conference. And truthfully, you could be better come March, but worse in your record for January and February. Last year, they beat Baylor in overtime. Well, there's nothing to say that they played Baylor a second time that won those maybe. I mean, that was one in Baylor and it was a great game to be at, frankly, but I don't know if they win that game 10 out of 10 times. They lost at Ames, Iowa. Well, it's hard to play in Ames. I mean, you gotta go to Ames again, right? Like they lost at TCU. They won in Houston, but if you only have to go at TCU, that's how the Matrix works out. You have to go to Arizona, right? Okay, that's tough all of a sudden. Like those things add up. And I do think Kansas is better. I do think Baylor is better. I also saw Houston beat those programs a year ago. I think the deal will be, they can realistically be better, but their record be 13 and five. And it's, oh, the sky is falling, lost two more games. Really, they just, they played the same big 12 schedule and they lost one or two of those close games, right? And that's, they won a lot of close ones last year. - Parker, it's worth, thank you so much for coming on the show. Folks, if you're listening to the show and you want to learn more about Houston, you want to get prepared to follow this team this year, definitely check out Locked On Cougs, fantastic show. Parker does great work covering the football and the basketball side of things for that Houston program. Thanks again for hopping on and looking forward to talking to you more throughout the season. - Yeah, thanks for having me, Andy. It's going to wrap it up for us today here on the Locked On College basketball podcast. We're going to be back on Thursday with another team preview show and then Isaac and I are going to be back on Friday, getting you ready with a conference preview as well. It's preview week, preview month here on Locked On College basketballs. We're still about a month plus six or seven weeks out from the start of the college basketball season. Folks, thank you so much for listening and until next time, as always, peace out. - A prime member, you can listen to this Locked On podcast ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. (upbeat music)
