\n Bruce Pascoe
\n <\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s just not living in la-la land for four years on college campus scholarships. It\u2019s very blue collar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chung said Houston also had a more homogeneous campus as a result, though it all still made for the sort of crazed student section many top college programs are known for: The Cage was made up of four rows of standing room behind courtside\u00a0\u2014 prominent seating areas that are often sold off to donors at other schools. Students “seated” there actually stood the whole time, flashing balloons while often wearing hard hats and jerseys.<\/p>\n
While Cummings had an “N” on his chest, Chung had an “H” and, once inside, the two sandwiched other students between them to spell out\u00a0Houston. There is room for others, too.<\/p>\n
“If anyone shows up late, they can be exclamation points,” Cummings said.<\/p>\n
They’re in vogue<\/p>\n
Another obstacle to building a fan base in Houston: That it\u2019s in Houston.<\/p>\n
The sprawling metro area already features NBA, NFL and major league baseball teams, as well as college programs at Rice and Texas Southern. Several major universities, including Texas, Texas A&M and Baylor, are also within an easy half-day drive.<\/p>\n
But Cummins said the enthusiasm for Cougars basketball is starting to reach the highs of the famed Phi Slamma Jamma days in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnywhere in Houston, if your\u2019e wearing a UH shirt, somebody\u2019s gonna say ‘Go Coogs,'” Cummins said. \u201cIt feels like the entire city is starting to rally around U of H again.\u201d<\/p>\n
To emphasize its connection to locals, Houston Athletics is using the slogan #ForTheCity.<\/p>\n
Coooooogs House<\/p>\n
Houston enlisted the help of 1989 Heisman Trophy quarterback Andre Ware in helping heat up things inside the Fertitta Center before tipoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhose house?\u201d Ware asked the crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cCougs house!\u201d the crowd shouted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhooooooose house?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCooooooogs house!\u201d the crowd shouted.<\/p>\n
Relocated Tucsonan<\/p>\n
Tucson native and the longtime Spanish-language voice of Arizona men\u2019s basketball, Francisco Romero, was back in his old post Saturday.<\/p>\n
Now living year-round in Houston, where he is the Spanish-language voice of the Houston Astros, Romero worked the game for Tucson\u2019s Urbana 92.5-FM, a role he used to have at McKale Center\u00a0\u2014 while also doing the Astros during baseball season.<\/p>\n
Romero actually held both jobs for 14 years before moving to Houston full-time in 2021, after spending winters in Tucson and summers in Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe miss Tucson but there was so much running back and forth,\u201d Romero said.<\/p>\n
Romero said he still does some remote creative work for UA athletics in Spanish, while his wife has taken a job working at Rice.<\/p>\n
Halo effect<\/p>\n
Among the changes from the $60 million transformation of Hofheinz Pavilion into the Fertitta Center that concluded in 2018 was the addition of an oval-shaped video board over the edges of the court.<\/p>\n
But unlike\u00a0the bigger one at Los Angeles\u2019 Intuit Dome, this one is a thinner strip that features a scoreboard, some basic stats\u00a0\u2014 and plenty of advertising. The Intuit Dome halo features wider video screens, though the Fertitta Center has huge video boards high up behind each basket.<\/p>\n
The new carved out bowl also features better sightlines and premium club seating, making it feel much different than the old place where UA last appeared, beating Houston 85-71 on Jan. 12, 2008, when Kevin O\u2019Neill was the Wildcats\u2019 interim head coach.<\/p>\n
Big 12 brothers<\/p>\n
Not long after Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said Texas Tech\u2019s JT Toppin was again the best player in the Big 12, Toppin tore his ACL and was lost for the season.<\/p>\n
Three days earlier, BYU lost veteran standout wing Richie Saunders for the same reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou feel so badly for the kid. Not the team. The kid,\u201d Sampson said. \u201cIt just breaks your heart, especially those two. They\u2019re foundational pieces for their teams, great people, great role models in their community. They make the Big 12 look good. It was just so heartbreaking for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sampson said he texted condolences to Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland, while even Young did the same after receiving plenty of texts of his own over Saunders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve really appreciated the brotherhood of the Big 12 coaches,\u201d Young said. \u201cI got several really heartfelt texts from head coaches in our league about Richie. I shot a few out myself to Texas Tech and just really appreciate the brotherhood. It’s pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
It works<\/p>\n
Asked before Saturday’s game about Houston\u2019s home environment compared to the more celebrated ones at Kansas and Iowa State, Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson appeared puzzled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s good where it is. Comparison is the thief of joy,\u201d Sampson said. \u201cI appreciate all the arenas we play in but I\u2019m not constantly trying to find something wrong with ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Arizona](\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\")
<\/p>\n
Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson speaks with his players during a time out in the first half against Arizona, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026, in Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maria Lysaker, Associated Press<\/p>\n
Numbers also backed him up. The Cougars regularly have zero empty seats\u00a0\u2014 selling out the 7,035-seat Fertitta Center routinely\u00a0\u2014 and won 51 of their 52 previous games entering Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure how much better we can get,\u201d Sampson said.<\/p>\n
The big number\u00a0<\/p>\n
3: Arizona wins over teams rated in the top three spots of the Associated Press Top 25 poll at the time of the game\u00a0\u2014 Florida, UConn and Houston. According to ESPN, no team has done that since Kansas in 2011-12.<\/p>\n
The same big number\u00a0<\/p>\n
3: Or fewer 3-point shots Arizona has made in each of its three wins over top-three ranked teams this season, as noted by CBS Sports: The Wildcats were 2 of 5 from 3 against Florida, 2 of 10 from 3 at UConn and 3 of 12 at Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Quotable\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I usually don’t talk about myself, and I don’t know what my coaching career is gonna end up at. But I do know one thing: I’m gonna have to become a better coach by coaching against Kelvin Sampson. One hundred percent. You look at coaches that set the benchmark in certain areas, and for me, he’s one of them. What he’s done with this program down here has been amazing to me.” \u2014\u00a0UA coach Tommy Lloyd, who lost the first three games he coached against Sampson’s Cougars at Arizona<\/p>\n
Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at bpascoe@tucson.com<\/a>. On X(Twitter): @brucepascoe<\/p>\n Be the first to know<\/p>\n
Get local news delivered to your inbox!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014\u00a0Even to get a standing spot in the coveted courtside section known as \u201cThe Cage,\u201d Houston students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1770,56,58,57,9891,70709],"class_list":["post-175207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-basketball","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-men","tag-subscriber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}