Deserves its own thread....
On the fan turnout
“It almost brings a tear to your eye because of where we were last year and earlier this year. When Mack Rhoades and President Renu Khator came to me and talked to me about this job, I identified two areas that were poor. One was facilities, and the second was fan support, the apathy. I stepped back and said that if those are the problems then we are going to be fine. Whereas some people saw it as a problem, I saw it as an opportunity. It is a great opportunity.
First, it starts with administration. Coaches don’t win championships; administrators do; I made sure they understood that. If they want us to win championships, then they have to build better facilities. With fan support, two things had to happen, style of play and we had to win.
Here we are in our second year and we are one game out of first in the conference; who would have ever thought that? Will we win the league? I don’t know, maybe not, but that is ok because winning conference was never our goal to start the season. We played ourselves into ‘let’s see what happens now.’ We have a big game Sunday. I like my team, I like how far they have come. We have put this thing together and the guys have really bought into our culture and into each other and it says a lot about them.”
On the energy of the crowd
“It makes a huge difference. I’m so happy our kids get to experience that. Our coaching staff has experienced that, butLeRon Barnes, L.J. Rose and Danrad Knowles have not. Those guys that have played here before we got here they’ve never seen that. I was so happy for them. I’m really proud of our fans.
Lauren (Sampson) has been our liaison with the students. She’s had me at Dr. Simon Bott’s class twice and at all of these dorms. I knew that the work she had put in with taking me around, if we started winning, those kids would start identifying. Now that we’re winning, they’ll come back.
The LSU game was a huge crowd, but tonight was our crowd. There are a lot of people who came to the LSU game to see Ben Simmons, and that’s OK. I would have come to see him too, but I would have left impressed with Houston. Tonight, those were our people, and I was really proud of that. A lot of those people had not seen us play and they’ll come back. That’s how you get this thing going, and we’re going to get it going. We’re going to build this program up and I’m excited about it."
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As much praise as Herman gets, and rightfully so, Sampson is every bit as good. CKS is here for the long haul too. I am not sure how we got so lucky to land Sampson, but I am glad we did.
On the fan turnout
“It almost brings a tear to your eye because of where we were last year and earlier this year. When Mack Rhoades and President Renu Khator came to me and talked to me about this job, I identified two areas that were poor. One was facilities, and the second was fan support, the apathy. I stepped back and said that if those are the problems then we are going to be fine. Whereas some people saw it as a problem, I saw it as an opportunity. It is a great opportunity.
First, it starts with administration. Coaches don’t win championships; administrators do; I made sure they understood that. If they want us to win championships, then they have to build better facilities. With fan support, two things had to happen, style of play and we had to win.
Here we are in our second year and we are one game out of first in the conference; who would have ever thought that? Will we win the league? I don’t know, maybe not, but that is ok because winning conference was never our goal to start the season. We played ourselves into ‘let’s see what happens now.’ We have a big game Sunday. I like my team, I like how far they have come. We have put this thing together and the guys have really bought into our culture and into each other and it says a lot about them.”
On the energy of the crowd
“It makes a huge difference. I’m so happy our kids get to experience that. Our coaching staff has experienced that, butLeRon Barnes, L.J. Rose and Danrad Knowles have not. Those guys that have played here before we got here they’ve never seen that. I was so happy for them. I’m really proud of our fans.
Lauren (Sampson) has been our liaison with the students. She’s had me at Dr. Simon Bott’s class twice and at all of these dorms. I knew that the work she had put in with taking me around, if we started winning, those kids would start identifying. Now that we’re winning, they’ll come back.
The LSU game was a huge crowd, but tonight was our crowd. There are a lot of people who came to the LSU game to see Ben Simmons, and that’s OK. I would have come to see him too, but I would have left impressed with Houston. Tonight, those were our people, and I was really proud of that. A lot of those people had not seen us play and they’ll come back. That’s how you get this thing going, and we’re going to get it going. We’re going to build this program up and I’m excited about it."
====================================================
As much praise as Herman gets, and rightfully so, Sampson is every bit as good. CKS is here for the long haul too. I am not sure how we got so lucky to land Sampson, but I am glad we did.
