After Houston defeated Michigan 83-66 in a recent exhibition game, Kelvin Sampson made sure his view of the Cougars’ roster was crystal clear.
“These are brand-new guys. We’ve got a brand-new team. We’re new,” Sampson said.
Houston was ranked No. 10 in the AP preseason poll, perhaps more on the strength of its reputation — six straight Sweet 16s, a top-two tournament seed in five of those years — than on the clarity of its current roster.
The Cougars will see how their reloaded roster fares in a game that counts when they host La Salle to open the regular season on Monday.
Houston had three players selected in the first 45 picks of the NBA draft (Kingston Flemings, Chris Cenac Jr. and Emanuel Sharp). Another top performer, Milos Uzan, is now in the G League.
Joseph Tugler enters his fourth season with Houston as a defensive and rebounding specialist, but Sampson freely admitted that Tugler was a “no-show” against Michigan.
Sampson is known for being selective about his portal picks, and this year’s class will go a long way to determining how far the Cougars go in the coach’s 13th year on the job.
Dedan Thomas Jr. dropped 25 points and seven assists against Michigan. An offensive dynamo at UNLV and most recently LSU, he has averaged 14.6 points and 5.3 assists over 76 career games.
Another transfer, Delrecco Gillespie, added 16 points and six rebounds in the win. Gillespie was both an all-conference selection and an all-defense honoree last season at Kent State, where he put up 17.7 points and 11.3 rebounds per game. And Corey Hadnot II, formerly of Purdue Fort Wayne, projects as another Sampsonesque two-way guard who averaged 20.4 points, 3.5 assists and 1.8 steals a year ago.
They’re joining Tugler, returning contributors Chase McCarty and Mercy Miller, and highly-regarded freshmen Ikenna Alozie and Arafan Diane, the latter a five-star 7-footer.
According to Sampson, nobody in his locker room was celebrating the Michigan victory and he wouldn’t be overreacting to the film in one direction or the other.
“We made a buttload of mistakes (against Michigan),” Sampson said. “Did a lot of good stuff, especially when you’ve got guys playing their first-ever game like this.”
La Salle — a program whose Cinderella run to the Sweet 16 in 2013 was its only NCAA Tournament bid of the past 34 years — was picked next-to-last in the 14-team Atlantic 10 Conference preseason poll.
Rob Dockery returned after testing the portal. He was the Explorers’ scorer and rebounder at 12.5 points and 6.1 boards per game. However, the program must improve on its 342nd-ranked scoring offense (67.1 points).
“I think the biggest thing is last year we couldn’t shoot,” La Salle head coach Darris Nichols told Crossing Broad. “Three-point shooting was our biggest issue. But this year we’ve addressed that. We’ve got some guys who can really make shots.”
Those guys include Stephen F. Austin transfer Kam Burton, who made 76 3-pointers at a 42.5% clip last season, and Niagara transfer Vice Zanki, a 6-foot-8 wing who shot 38.5% from deep in 2025-26.
“Our biggest thing this year, we’re going to try and play faster than we have in the past and when you’ve got guys that can make shots, you can do that,” Nichols said.