SAN ANTONIO – When Houston basketball brings a recruit to campus, one of his first stops is a wall near the Cougars’ strength training area.
On it, program legend Hakeem Olajuwon’s likeness stretches its arms to full width. This is where Houston measures wingspan.
One of the key talking points surrounding Houston’s run to the national championship game Monday night has been coach Kelvin Sampson’s remarkable roster development. In an era defined by player movement and dollar signs, Sampson has maintained a relatively healthy, stable locker room. Four of his five starters Monday returned from last season, with a combined 13 years of experience at Houston among them.
Because Sampson tends to win through smart scouting and intensive development, there’s a temptation to paint his program as a perpetual underdog. Houston is anything but. The Cougars are the result of decades spent refining the process of building, improving and winning with a basketball team suited ideally to its coach.
Joseph Tugler, the unsung hero of Saturday’s semifinal win against Duke, is its posterchild.
“Around our program, if I say, ‘That’s JoJo being JoJo,’” Sampson said, “everybody would understand.”
Houston’s Joseph Tugler is blend of smarts and toughness
The day Tugler first visited the Olajuwon wall, he measured 7-6 ½.
Asked Sunday, a Houston basketball staffer wasn’t sure exactly how far The Dream stretches in full. A cursory Google search suggests Olajuwon’s wingspan topped out at 7-6. Tugler insists his isn’t quite that wide.
But that day, Tugler — affectionately known as JoJo — reached so far the Houston staff asked to measure his mother’s reach too. She stretched to 6-7.
These are the traits Sampson knows he needs. There’s a reason why, when Tugler signed, Sampson went out of his way to say Houston pushed for his commitment before the summer grassroots circuit, knowing he’d blow up.
Wingspan is crucial to Sampson’s preference for blitzing ball screens. Tugler’s footwork moves his 6-8, 230-pound body like a guard would. And he can jump a second time for the rebounds opponents are still trying to secure on their first.
“When I watched JoJo play before we recruited him,” Sampson said, “his second jump is the best, and this includes the NBA. I’ve never had a kid second jump like him. His third jump is as good as most people’s first.”
Tugler is like Houston — all toughness and tools and togetherness and brains. One of his sisters has a Ph. D. Tugler found his in basketball, skipping with friends between the four rec centers within reach of his neighborhood growing up. If one was closed, Tugler just kept moving until he found an open court.
The result: a remarkably smart basketball player, and a tough one too.
After Tugler made the game-winning pass to point guard Milos Uzan in the Sweet 16 win over Purdue, Sampson described his sophomore forward as “instinctively instinctive.” Uzan called Tugler “a dog, on and off the floor.” When Sampson lines his team up for the famous loose-ball drill he runs a few times a year, Sampson sometimes tells Tugler to sit out because, as Tugler put it, Sampson “knows what he’s gonna get from me.”
To a man, teammates talk about Tugler like a winner, which is convenient because that’s what he’s become.
“Some of the stuff he does, you just can’t teach. He has natural instincts. He always does extra,” L.J. Cryer, Houston’s leading scorer, said. “He doesn’t care about his stats or anything like that. He just cares about winning.”
Joseph Tugler at best in biggest moments
This shouldn’t be surprising.
Tugler was a four-star, top-70 prospect in his class per the 247Sports Composite. When he committed to Houston he did so over interest from Texas, TCU, SMU, Kansas State and Tulsa.
Yet the idea of a coach being able to differentiate between stars and skills has somehow become foreign in the fast-moving world of college basketball roster management. Sampson’s process being old school doesn’t make it underdog.
College basketball still took notice this season.
Tugler won Big 12 defensive player of the year, as well as the Lefty Driesell Award, given annually to the best defensive player in Division I. Sampson broke one of the cardinal rules of grammar for him Sunday, calling Tugler “a unique, unique player.”
That’s not the only rule Tugler’s convinced Sampson to break this weekend.
Normally, when one of his players receives a technical foul, Sampson benches him out of principle. But when Tugler drew a one-shot tech late Saturday against Duke, for touching the ball while it was still in the inbounder’s hands, Sampson changed course.
“He was so apologetic, almost in tears. I couldn’t even get on him,” Sampson said. “That was born out of effort and wanting to do the right thing.”
The right thing came soon after, when Tugler — repaying his coach’s faith — blocked Kon Knueppel’s layup to prompt the possession that cut the lead to three, then flushed home Mylik Wilson’s missed 3-point shot to trim it to one. Houston would score the next four points and win the game.
“I love coach not giving up on me, because I know I’m not going to give up on the team,” Tugler said. “When it comes down to it, JoJo, it’s a dumb foul. Just got to make up for it for sure.”
Here’s the last thing Sampson knows when he sees, what you can’t measure with a bench press or on a wall. His players don’t shrink from big moments.
Tugler reset himself so quickly after the tech. Emanuel Sharp’s 3-pointer. J’Wan Roberts’ free throws. The comeback against Purdue. At Kansas. Against Duke.
Throughout this tournament run, Sampson has framed himself as the folksy elder statesman, spinning yarns about Jud Heathcote as easily as he talks about recruiting McDonald’s All Americans.
It masks a coach operating at the top of his game, even if he’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning.
And it’s from players like JoJo Tugler that excellence reflects. Players like JoJo Tugler who might just be poised to deliver America’s most underappreciated college basketball program its long-awaited first national title.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on X: @ZachOsterman.