standout forward Delrecco Gillespie<\/a> announced that he would be joining the Cougars for next season.<\/p>\nDelrecco Gillespie Joins Houston![\"Delrecco](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01knz8e58x03e4xew2p0.jpg\" "\\"Delrecco")
<\/p>\n
Kent State Golden Flashes forward Delrecco Gillespie (23) before a game agains the Purdue Boilermakers at Mackey Arena. | Jacob Musselman-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s junior forward Joseph Tugler is the only returning big man for the Cougars, and while he will greatly improve with a healthy offseason, UH needed to address its interior scoring problem.<\/p>\n
Gillespie fits that role nicely as the majority of his game is scoring in the paint.<\/p>\n
He had a breakout final season at Kent State, and he earned a First-Team All-MAC selection by averaging 17.7 points and 11.3 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n
Standing at 6-foot-8 and 230 pounds, Gillespie is a matchup problem down-low and he will be that interior scorer that Houston didn\u2019t have last season.<\/p>\n
While a majority of his baskets come from open dunks or contested layups, he also has great touch for a big around the rim, and he can hit fade-away hook shots just like former forward J\u2019Wan Roberts.<\/p>\n
While he probably won\u2019t have the green light from behind the arc at Houston, he can make threes when left open.<\/p>\n
Another way he fits right into Houston is that he is ultra-aggressive on the defensive side of the ball, and he is very athletic for his size.<\/p>\n
Last season, he averaged 1.2 blocks and a steal per game, which will only improved after an offseason with the Cougars\u2019 staff.<\/p>\n
One major thing that Gillespie will need to improve on is taking care of the basketball.<\/p>\n
In his final year at Kent State, he averaged just under three turnovers per game, which simply is too many to work in Sampson\u2019s system.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Gillespie is known as a hard worker, and his former head coach Rob Senderoff only had great things to say about his decision to come to Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201d[He is] a great kid with a thirst to get better who has improved every year at Kent State,\u201d Senderoff told basketball analyst Jeff Goodman<\/a>. \u201cHe is a rebounding machine who fits their style as a player. And, he is a winner who cares about winning first and foremost.\u201d<\/p>\nGillespie no doubt will thrive once he gets his footing at Houston, and his paint presence and rebounding ability will greatly improve the Cougars\u2019 roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Houston losing a total of nine players from last season\u2019s team, coach Kelvin Sampson staff have no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-245607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245607","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=245607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}