SAN ANTONIO – It was Friday, Dec. 6, the day before Houston’s home game against Butler. The Cougars were coming off a discouraging week in Las Vegas, where they lost in overtime to Alabama and San Diego State at The Players Era Festival. Coach Kelvin Sampson was frustrated with his new point guard, 6-foot-4 junior Milos Uzan, who had transferred from Oklahoma. While scouting Butler, Sampson noticed that the Bulldogs’ big men played in drop coverage off pick-and-rolls. So it would be critical that Uzan attack it accordingly.
Uzan was talented — Sampson would not have recruited him out of the transfer portal otherwise — but he wasn’t tough. At least, not by Sampson’s famously exacting standards. “He was like butter in a microwave,” Sampson said. So on the day before the game, Sampson directed most of the players to stand on the baseline while he ran Uzan through pick-and-roll sets over and over again. He assigned 6-foot-3, 200-pound freshman guard Kordelius Jefferson, whom Sampson described as a “mean, nasty, strong, athletic tough point guard,” to be Uzan’s primary defender. “I told him, go over the top of the screen and foul him every time,” Sampson told Hoops HQ while munching on a sandwich in the Houston locker room Thursday afternoon. “I wanted Kordell to bully him and beat him up. Because that’s what Milos needed.”
Uzan didn’t handle the tactic well at first, but as the drill dragged on for 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, he responded just as Sampson hoped. “He went from getting embarrassed to doing pretty good, then getting mad, then dominating,” Sampson said. “Then he played his best game against Butler. He still talks about that drill. That gave him confidence.”
That was very much in evidence over the course of the Big 12 season, when Uzan averaged 11.6 points and 4.4 assists (to just 1.4 turnovers) while making a career-best 44.5 percent from three-point range (up from 29.6 percent last season). And it has been especially apparent during the NCAA Tournament, which is a big reason the Cougars are back in the Final Four, where they will face Duke on Saturday night at approximately 8:49 p.m. ET on CBS. During the four games that preceded this national semifinal, Uzan averaged 12.8 points while shooting 9-of-15 from three-point range. He totaled 20 assists and 8 turnovers and was at his best during Houston’s Sweet Sixteen win over Purdue, finishing with 22 points and six assists. The last of those points came with 0.8 seconds to play, when Uzan scored on a baseline out-of-bounds play to enable Houston to escape 62-60.
Every player’s path to a Final Four is challenging, but that was especially true for Uzan. For starters, his decision to come to Houston meant taking on the hefty responsibility of replacing Jamal Shead, the All-American point guard who led the Cougars to a No. 1 seed in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. When Houston assistant coach Kellen Sampson first reached out to Uzan after he entered the transfer portal, it didn’t take long to convince Uzan that Houston was the right place for him. “He told me that, ‘A lot of schools are looking to be in the tournament, but we’re looking to win it,’” Uzan said. “That caught my attention. Once they said I was who they wanted, I didn’t even answer the phone for other schools. So it was mutual for sure.”
Uzan’s path hit another speed bump in early October when he ran into 6-foot-3 junior guard Emanuel Sharp’s elbow during a loose ball drill and shattered his nose. Uzan had surgery and missed three critical weeks of conditioning and preparation. “We had just started playing with each other, so I lost some chemistry sitting out,” he said. “That was tough, especially with the expectations that people had on me.”
“Failure was not an option with Milos. We hand picked him. He was going to make it, even if I had to make adjustments.”
—Kelvin Sampson
Thus, Uzan was already behind by the time the season started. In the Cougars’ second game, he had 10 points, 4 assists and 3 turnovers in a 74-69 loss to Auburn. He also struggled during the Players Era Festival. “He was not very good in Vegas, but it’s not because he didn’t try,” Sampson said. “He just wasn’t ready to be good.”
So by the time the Cougars were preparing for their next game against Butler, Sampson was firmly focused on the need to bring his new point guard up to speed. And that was not a pleasant experience for his new point guard. Yet it worked. Uzan was noticeably steadier against the Bulldogs, going for 13 points, 3 assists and 1 turnover in a 79-51 win. With each passing game, with each passing week, his confidence grew. So did his toughness. As a result, Houston had the season many had predicted, including winning the Big 12 regular-season title for the second straight year as well as the tournament championship and the NCAA Tournament’s Midwest Regional. “Failure was not an option with Milos,” Sampson said. “We hand-picked him. He was going to make it, even if I had to make adjustments.”
In the Houston locker room on Thursday, Uzan smiled when he was asked to reflect on Sampson’s decision to put him through that pick-and-roll grinder back in December. “I understood what he was doing,” Uzan said. “I came here to get that tough coaching. In order for us to be a good team, I had to be able to perform as a point guard. So that’s just elite coaching, what he did right there.”
Sampson gives much credit for Uzan’s progress to the four returning starters. “They gave him permission to be their point guard,” he said. Perhaps it was because of the empathy they felt, considering all of them had likewise been through Sampson’s wringer at one time or another. “That’s the type of coach he is. He’s gonna wait until you get it right because he wants you to get better,” Sharp told Hoops HQ. “Jamal (Shead) got it worse than anybody, but it made him a great point guard. I saw the same thing with Milos. If he didn’t go through that adversity, he wouldn’t be the player he is right now.”
Uzan will need to be at his best again if Houston is going to win its first NCAA championship. Regardless of what happens in San Antonio this weekend, however, he can feel gratified knowing that he took on an immense challenge, fought through adversity and put himself — and his team — in position to make history. “I’ve got a really good support circle with great people who kept me humble and hungry,” Uzan said. “I’ve seen my growth and I have a lot of personal pride in that. I feel like I earned everything I’ve got.”
