The 2025 Houston basketball season has not been as dominant as in the past, but they are still playing extremely well. Houston is 16-1 and is coming off a dominant win over West Virginia at home, 77-48. The key for the Cougars this season is their freshmen, mainly Kingston Flemings in the backcourt and Chris Cenac Jr. down low.
After the blowout win against West Virginia, Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson spoke about Chris Cenac Jr., praising him for how well he's handled everything in college and for never complaining. He also said that whatever NBA team drafts him will be incredibly lucky.
“I love that kid,” Sampson said. “He never has a bad day. And I have worn him out. He's not looked me in the eye. He's never complained. Wherever he's playing in the NBA down the road, that team is going to be lucky.”
Cenac's motor was the most significant question mark he had coming into college basketball, and Sampson's praise of that aspect of his game is a considerable improvement and shows that he is coachable and able to handle the work ethic of college basketball and, eventually, the NBA.
The Cougars have been dominant over their last two games, and Cenac has been a massive key to that. He finished with 11 points and four rebounds against Baylor, and then seven points and 10 rebounds against West Virginia. Sampson also highlighted Cenac as part of their ‘Holy Trinity' on defense.
“He was inconsistent,” UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson said of Cenac. “I thought he was always a kid who played in flurries. He’d put together four or five minutes, and your eyes would open, and your jaw would drop. And then he’d put together six, seven, eight to 10 minutes where you don’t notice him a whole lot.
“The fact that we recruited him so long, we could identify that early as his M.O., and something problematic. That was priority No. 1 — fixing it. Making sure that every minute he was on the floor, he was super intentional.”
