After suffering their first loss of the season to BYU at the buzzer that spoiled Houston’s Homecoming game, and sobered the team after two relatively easy wins (one exhibition) to begin the campaign, head coach Kelvin Sampson took a deep breath and calmly uttered a short but impacting statement.
“If I was going down a dark alley, on this team, the one guy I would take with me is Nate Hinton,” Sampson said after the loss. “I would go to war with that kid any day. I love that kid.“
The 6-foot-5-inch sophomore guard from North Carolina had only four points off of a lowly 1 of 5 shooting and two turnovers that night against BYU.