Terrance Arceneaux Knows His Next Year Leap Is Coming, But Houston’s Uber Talent Is Pushing On To Win The Natty Now

WICHITA, Kansas — Terrance Arceneaux knows that next season will be his chance to really takeoff. He’ll be one full season of basketball removed from the Achilles tear he suffered in the December of 2023 and everyone’s told him that it’s the season after the return from an Achilles injury where everything starts to feel great again. The University of Houston’s talented third year guard is both looking forward to this and trying to do everything he can to put it off for as long as possible.

“I kind of knew that coming into it,” Arceneaux tells PaperCity. “I knew whatever this year was going to be. . . I honestly think I kind of overachieved. I did a lot of impressive things I didn’t think. . . My goal at the beginning of the year was just to prove that I could do it.

“And I definitely feel I had some games where I was rolling and I felt good. I knew next year I’m going to feel even better and my leg’s going to feel a lot stronger. And I’m going to be able to work on it a lot more. Last year, half of the summer, I couldn’t even walk.”

Arceneaux has not just played in all 35 of second ranked Houston’s games heading into Saturday night’s NCAA Tournament showdown with Gonzaga (7:40 pm, TNT), he leads Kelvin Sampson’s deepest team in bench scoring, averaging 7.2 points per game. The smooth athletic Arceneuax provides a needed scoring punch to go with Mylik Wilson’s defense, rebounding and late game guts and center Ja’Vier Francis’ post defense, inside scoring and rebounding on the second unit. For this Houston program, the time is now.

So Arceneaux pushes on, determined to do his part, to do everything he possibly can to keep next season at bay for as long as possible. No matter how painful parts of this season may be for Houston’s No. 23.

“I be dreading the days when I wake up sometimes and I can’t step,” Arceneaux says in the locker room at Intrust Bank Arena, the 15,000 seat venue in this city of 400,000 that will be the stage for a second round between the two programs with the most wins in college basketball over the last eight seasons (239 each). “I’ll be super super stiff and the first step will be like… Feel like I’m an old man sometimes.

“I think about it (how much better he’ll feel next season). It’s definitely something I think of. But I’m just in the moment right now and just trying to win this natty.”

Terrance Arceneaux read Kobe Bryant’s book The Mamba Mentality during his rehab and tried to attack his own recovery with the type of attitude one of the most fanatical and single minded athletes in sports history displayed. Arceneaux marvels at how Kobe stayed in the game to shoot (and swish) two free throws in the moments after the Lakers star tore his Achilles. Knowing firsthand how painful that injury is, Arceneaux still just shakes his head at the idea of doing that.

“Somebody sent it me and I read that,” he says of the Kobe book. “And I used to get videos on my timeline about it all the time.”

Early in Arceneaux’s long rehab, a random encounter with an NFL player further fueled his belief that much better feeling days are ahead. “He was telling me his process and how the year after the year he came back, that next year, he felt great,” Arceneaux tells PaperCity. “And he was like ‘It’s probably going to be like that for you too.’ ”

What Terrance Arceneaux will be like next season is a tantalizing prospect to almost everyone in the University of Houston program. Coaches included. This 6-foot-6 guard has all the tools, the body control and creativity to make things happen at the rim. The cat in Flow doesn’t even move with this much start and stop agility.

“I mean he’s a special talent,” Houston All-American guard LJ Cryer says of Arceneaux. “We try to encourage him to go out there and be the player that we know he is. I think part of it is the injury as well. It’s not easy to come back from stuff like that.

“I feel like he’s going to continue to get better. And he’s going to end up doing what we all think he can do.”

“I think about it (how much better he’ll feel next season). It’s definitely something I think of. But I’m just in the moment right now and just trying to win this natty.” — UH guard Terrance Arceneaux

The Terrance Arceneaux Of This March

Cryer and this Houston team cannot wait for Terrance Arceneaux’s healthier next season jump though. These Cougars need everything they can get from him now. They’ll push him to try to do more, to not defer. When Arceneaux passes up an open 3-pointer in UH’s first round NCAA Tournament romp over SIU Edwardsville, assistant coach Quannas White, head coach Kelvin Sampson and LJ Cryer all come up to him separately shortly after, each urging him to take those shots.

“He’s a great player, but sometimes he be forgetting how good he is,” UH starting guard Emanuel Sharp says of Arceneaux. “But he’s tapping into what he can do.

“And we’re going to need him.”

Arceneaux knows that. He wears No. 23 because of his love for another ruthless basketball competitor, maybe the most ruthless basketball competitor ever. Michael Jordan. His dad used to play him old VCR tapes of Jordan even though His Airness retired for the final time seven months before the 21-year-old Arceneaux was born. Eric Arceneaux found that turning on those old Jordan tapes is one of the rare things that could get his energetic young son to sit still.

“Love Michael Jordan,” Arceneaux says. “He crazy. . . Even just without me knowing Kobe or Michael Jordan, just knowing Coach Samps. I feel like your competitiveness will grow. Just Coach Samps, I feel like Coach Samps is up there with them guys.

“He don’t play, but he’s crazy competitive.”

Arceneaux is showing his own fight by playing through the nagging pain that comes with a repaired Achilles in the first season after surgery. An x-ray after the Big 12 Tournament (when Arceneaux challenged his limits by playing three games in three days) showed no new damage as PaperCity first reported on Selection Sunday.

It’s a handling the pain thing. And Arceneaux watched J’Wan Roberts play on despite needing to have his knee painfully drained by a giant needle every week last season. He saw LJ Cryer push through a foot injury that would also require offseason surgery. Arceneaux isn’t about to not be there for Roberts, Cryer, Wilson and Francis in their sure last chance to win the national title now.

“I mean he’s a special talent. We try to encourage him to go out there and be the player that we know he is.” — UH guard LJ Cryer on Terrance Arceneaux

Houston’s No.23 knows the Next Year Health Leap is coming. He cannot wait for it in some ways. But there is important March business to take care of first.

“It’s hard just sitting out for that long and coming back,” says Sharp, who missed an entire year with a horrific broken leg and didn’t feel normal physically until his second season back playing. “Especially in college basketball. The speed of the game. The physicality. Especially with us. The intensity with which we play. It’s tough to come back from injury.

“But he’s doing it greatly. I relate to him. I know how he feels. It’s tough. Especially with a traumatic injury like that. It doesn’t just go away in a year. That takes a couple of years to fully feel 100 percent.”

The Next Year Leap is real. But Terrance Arceneaux will wait. He knows his guys need him now.