‘Keep talking about Kentucky.’ Houston eager to get blue-blood Wildcats on the court.

One locker room here Thursday afternoon was the home to big laughs, fun and games, and Keldon Johnson bouncing around with a light-up microphone, serenading teammates and mugging for the cameras.

In another locker room, a few minutes earlier and just a few yards down the hallway at the Sprint Center, there were smiles, sure. Houston’s players are obviously proud of their achievement — getting to this second week of the NCAA Tournament — but the Cougars’ mood was more measured. And the phrase “chip on our shoulder” was the most used of the day.

“Of course, we’re the underdogs and everybody overlooks Houston,” said DeJon Jarreau, one of the team’s leading scorers. “But we know that already, so it’s not really a surprise for us.”

The Cougars are the No. 3 seed in this Midwest Region, winners of 33 games this season. They’re also from the American Athletic Conference, and they’re sharing the stage this week with Kentucky (their Sweet 16 opponent) and North Carolina (the No. 1 seed at the top of the bracket). They know what players at schools like that really think of players like them.

“They look at us as mid-majors,” said Corey Davis, the team’s top scorer. “They’re going to look at us as kind of the little brothers of basketball.”

Junior guard Armoni Brooks said no one on the outside expects Houston to advance out of this region.

Sophomore forward Fabian White said the Cougars have been overlooked all year, and that doesn’t change when you share a bracket with the blue bloods: “It’s nothing new to us. We just know, as University of Houston, people are always going to be like, ‘Who is that?’”

It’s a program that pretty much everyone associates with one brief era — Phi Slama Jama — when the Cougars advanced to three straight Final Fours and two national title games behind the play of future NBA stars like Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

The current players know that history well. And they know the truth about this team.

“C’mon, man. We don’t have an Olajuwon,” said senior big man Breaon Brady. “We just have guys that just play hard.”

Brady held court in the middle of the Houston locker room Thursday afternoon, summing up how he and his teammates feel about this week’s trip to Kansas City. They didn’t say anything bad about Kentucky. They praised the tradition. They praised the talent of the young Wildcats. They praised John Calipari and his accomplishments.

They’re just a little sick of hearing about it.

“They’re just another team,” Brady said. “And everybody’s hyping Kentucky up because of the name. And we like that. We accept that. And I’m not taking anything away from them, but we’re not just going to sit here and just back down from ’em. Just because they’re Kentucky.”

How can a team with so much success — 33 wins to just three losses on the year — still have such a collective chip on its shoulder at this stage in the season? It’s not simply that they feel the narrative around this game has become: “Wow, you’re playing against Kentucky” — it’s that what they have accomplished to get to this point is somewhat lost in that narrative.

Brady said he has flashbacks to the grueling workouts — the ones that started way back in June — and the fighting and clawing he and his teammates had to go through to get here. They don’t feel lucky to be here. They don’t just feel happy to be here. They feel — and know — they belong here. And they didn’t come here just to answer questions about Kentucky and PJ Washington’s foot and how much they’re looking forward to playing the Wildcats.

They came here to win some basketball games.

“That’s been the chip,” Brady said. “That’s what people don’t understand. It’s not just that we’re the underdogs, it’s the work we’ve put in. We can’t get outworked by any team, and we feel like we’ve put in the most work of any team we’ve played. It shows on just how hard we play defense. We rebound like animals. And I know Kentucky rebounds like crazy. That’s a good team. But all I’m hearing is ‘Kentucky, Kentucky, PJ Washington’ this, that and the third. And they’re not talking about us. So that’s another thing that keeps us going. Keep talking about Kentucky. Go ahead. Keep asking us questions. We’ll keep answering them. But tomorrow is going to be the test. We play them at 9 o’clock (CDT). So that’s what it’s going to be all about.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2019 at 6:41 PM.