On the eve of No. 2 seed Houston’s first-round NCAA Tournament matchup, the Cougars have had a unique week coming off Sunday’s American Athletic Conference Championship win.
Following the trouncing sixth-ranked UH handed Cincinnati, the team got on a plane and flew to Indianapolis to enter the NCAA’s ‘controlled environment’ for March Madness.
The first couple of days, the players and coaches were in isolation, as were all Tier 1 personnel that arrived for the tournament over the weekend or on Monday. Teams had to clear two rounds of COVID-19 testing. For the Cougars, however, the two days in quarantine were needed days of rest, or as UH head coach Kelvin Sampson put it: a blessing in disguise.