MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Just before the starting lineups are announced, as the final seconds of pregame warmups tick down, the Houston men’s basketball players line up across from each other, creating a makeshift runway. The coaches, gathering near the bench on the opposite side of the floor, do the same.
Jamal Shead, Houston’s 6-foot-1 ball-handling maestro, readies in a stance like a sprinter waiting to burst out of the blocks. His teammate J’Wan Roberts stands behind him, pulling on his warmup shirt, creating a human slingshot. As soon as the coaches give the signal, Roberts releases and Shead takes off, a blur of scarlet fizzing across the court to a landing strip of awaiting coaches. He’s the first one through, every time, the rest of his teammates falling in line behind him.
“Clearing the runway, let him take off. That just gets him going,” Roberts said of the ritual. “There goes the best point guard I’ve ever played with.”
It’s a growing sentiment.
Last month, following a critical 73-65 home victory over top-10 Iowa State that kept the Cougars atop the Big 12 standings, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson delivered fire and brimstone from the ESPN pulpit in a postgame interview with Scott Van Pelt.
“I hear a lot of people talking about who the best point guard is. I never hear them mention Jamal Shead,” said Sampson, moments after Shead posted 26 points, 6 assists and 4 rebounds in 38 minutes. “I wouldn’t trade him for any point guard in America. He’s a winner. He’s what we stand for.”
Folks got the message. Shead recently earned Big 12 Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors in Houston’s first season as a member of the conference, leading the Cougars to a 30-4 record and regular-season title. The fourth-year senior was also named First-Team All-America by the Associated Press on Tuesday, after averaging 13.1 points, 6.2 assists, 3.8 rebounds, 2.3 steals and just 2 turnovers.
Another All-America First-Team honor for #⃣1⃣… CONGRATS, @Thejshead!
Second straight season @UHouston with @AP First-Team All-American#ForTheCity x #GoCoogs pic.twitter.com/Neh9jJUzW0
— Houston Men’s Hoops 🏀 🐾 (@UHCougarMBK) March 19, 2024
Houston basketball was good before Shead got there, reaching the NCAA Tournament in Sampson’s fourth and fifth seasons at the helm, including a Sweet 16 run in 2019. But it’s been great since Shead arrived, reaching the Final Four in 2021, his freshman season. Shead didn’t have a huge role on that team — at least not that was evident to most people — but was critical to the Elite Eight run in 2022 and another Sweet 16 trip last year. This season, he’s shouldered the Cougars to a No. 1 seed in the South region and second overall seed in the bracket, set to face 16-seed Longwood on Friday.
His ascendance has become an anomaly: a four-year, developmental player turned into a star who resisted the transfer portal’s siren song. He’s better for it, too, but so is Houston, a team with a legitimate shot at a national championship. Shead embodies a program defined by its toughness, defense and resiliency. He’s a box of smoke in Jordan sneakers, a true two-way orchestrator who plays bigger than he looks, faster than he lets on and always, always makes the right play.
“In our 10 years here, if I could have picked anyone to be the guy who led us into the Big 12, it would be Jamal Shead,” assistant coach Kellen Sampson said. “He never runs away from the responsibility of making the big play. He’s fearless.”
Kellen remembers the first time he saw the future, scouting the Great American Shootout grassroots event in Duncanville, Texas, in the summer of 2018.
Shead was playing on a nondescript, undersized team going up against future Kentucky Wildcats and Philadelphia 76ers star Tyrese Maxey. Shead’s team lost, but he took it to Maxey all game and was the only reason his team had a chance.
“Since that day, Jamal was my guy. I knew he had it, that he was what we were about and what we wanted to be at Houston,” Kellen said. “He was our point guard of the future. I just had to convince Coach.”
Coach also happens to be Dad, which in the Sampson family makes the burden of proof tougher to achieve. Kellen could leave his house in Houston at 4 a.m. and make it to Manor High School, just outside of Austin, by 6:30, in time to watch Shead work out and practice. It’s a drive he came to know well, and one that paid off.
“Even at 6:30 in the morning, Jamal was chock full of intangibles. Leading, popping guys around, holding them accountable,” Kellen said. “He was the energy in the room. It was terrific.”
Shead spent his first two high school seasons at nearby Pflugerville Connally, a bigger, more established program, but transferred to Manor to play for Anthony Swain, a young, second-year coach who wasn’t afraid of tough love. Manor played against Connally during Shead’s sophomore season, and Swain laid out his scouting report against the point guard: Back off, let him shoot jump shots, don’t let him get his teammates involved. He was already one of the best players in the district, but Swain told him he had the potential to be one of the best in the state. If Shead wanted to get there, he would have to adjust the game plan.
“Coach Swain took it upon himself to help me, getting on me, coaching me really hard,” Shead said.
Shead craved that type of dogged guidance. He was used to it. His mom, Lysa, would sit in the bleachers during games and shout “Sub! Sub!” if she felt her son wasn’t locked in. Shead wasn’t content with being good enough. It’s why he left a school with three or four college-level players on the roster to go to an unproven, middling program.
He took 500 shots a day that summer. He drove other players to practice and workouts. When he started his junior season draining 3-pointers and putting up 50-point games, Swain reminded him not to fall in love with scoring in lieu of making his teammates better. Shead was named District 18-5A Most Valuable Player and led Manor to its first state tournament.
“He changed our culture,” Swain said. “That allowed us to raise that standard for everyone else.”
All of it further endeared Shead to Kelvin Sampson and a Houston staff with a demanding reputation. The 2020 class was a strong one for guards in Texas, including L.J. Cryer (who started at Baylor and transferred to Houston this season) and Mike Miles Jr., who played at TCU. But Shead was an ideal fit for the Cougars.
“I loved why he wanted to go to Manor, what he was seeking,” Kellen said. “He embraces being an underdog.”
It didn’t make the transition to college any easier. Shead struggled as a freshman on the Cougars’ Final Four team, averaging 3.3 points and 1 turnover in 10 minutes a game. Kellen, an assistant for all of his father’s 10-year tenure at Houston, compared the first-year Shead to a quarterback who would throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns, but also three interceptions.
“There was a lot of polishing of his game,” Kellen said.
Shead ultimately found that shine on the scout team, giving the starters a look in practice by imitating SMU’s Kendric Davis or Baylor’s Davion Mitchell ahead of the Final Four. It set the table for a roster that would lean on him more and more each year after, starting the next season when leading scorer Marcus Sasser missed conference and postseason play with a foot injury. Shead started 32 games, averaging 10 points and 5.8 assists as the Cougars reached the Elite Eight.
“How he handled that scout team that year is why we haven’t signed a point guard since we got him,” Kellen said. “We haven’t needed to. We knew he was the guy.”
Jamal Shead is an extension of me on the court.
It’s a line Kelvin Sampson has uttered countless times, and one of the best compliments a coach can pay a player. But don’t mistake that connection for a warm-and-fuzzy disposition. Sampson has always been hardest on Shead. The guard’s success hasn’t curbed that enthusiasm.
“Not even close. That’s kind of made it worse, actually,” Shead said, chuckling. “He gets on me as hard as he possibly can, but he loves me at the end of the day. I’ve gotten better every year, and it’s because of what he does.”
Shead’s growth has been obvious to those watching closely, but his impact goes beyond the box score. He’s developed into the head of the snake for Houston’s swarming, constricting defense, with a speed and physicality Kellen believes could have made him an NFL-caliber safety. His leadership has maintained the same culture he instilled at Manor, his competitiveness fueling that underdog mentality as Houston joined the Big 12.
He’s been a distributor, a scorer and often both, including bumping up his points and assists (and limiting his turnovers) in conference play this season. He seeks the ball in tight, late-game situations, highlighted earlier this month on the road at Oklahoma, when he rebounded his own miss and hit the game-winning shot in the closing seconds.
Game Winner 🐐@Thejshead x #ForTheCity pic.twitter.com/BEi39D6FcM
— Houston Men’s Hoops 🏀 🐾 (@UHCougarMBK) March 3, 2024
“People are calling me like, ‘Man, Jamal is balling this year.’ I’m like, he’s been balling, he’s just on a bigger stage (in the Big 12),” Swain said. “If you don’t really know basketball, you don’t fully understand how important he is to their success. He’s the one who stirs the pot.”
Last year’s Cougars looked destined for another Final Four run as the top seed in the Midwest region, with a top-11 offense and top-five defense according to KenPom and two future NBA first-round picks in Sasser and Jarace Walker. Then it ran into a white-hot Miami that shot 44 percent from beyond the arc, bouncing Houston sooner than expected.
This year, Shead and Roberts came back, and Cryer joined. The team won 30 games for a third straight season and added a Big 12 title. The metrics, particularly on defense, paint another dominant picture. But the journey has been different. Houston’s depth has been ravaged by injuries: Sophomore wing Terrance Arceneaux went down with an Achilles tear in December, backup guard Ramon Walker Jr. was lost to a knee injury in February, and freshman forward JoJo Tugler broke his foot a few weeks back.
Roberts, hampered by a hand injury down the stretch, picked up a shin bruise that further limited him in the Big 12 tournament, contributing to a 28-point blowout loss to Iowa State in the championship game. Shead and the Coogs have had to smelt copper this season, upholding the standard the hard way.
“What Jamal has done this year is what he’s always done: He stood tall, stood up big in the biggest of moments,” Kellen said. “He just never backs down from a fight.”
If Houston manages another deep run over the coming weeks, it will require more of the same from its senior leader. A new but familiar challenge.
Not surprisingly, Jamal Shead is running toward it.
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(Photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today)
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