Why is Houston basketball wearing No. 32 patch? Cougars honor late teammate Reggie Chaney

Houston — the program of Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Phi Slama Jama, Texas’ Tallest Fraternity — is among a small handful of favorites to win the 2024 NCAA Tournament championship.

As the Cougars enter the Sweet 16, where they’ll face 4 seed Duke Friday night in Dallas, they carry many of the traits of a title contender.

They’re 32-4, improving their record since the start of the 2020-21 season to a ridiculous 125-18. They won the regular season title in the deepest and most difficult conference in the sport, the Big 12, and managed the feat in just their first season in the league. They have an experienced floor general in Jamal Shead, their astonishingly unflappable first-team all-American. They have a proven winner and program-builder in coach Kelvin Sampson, who has taken two different schools — Oklahoma in 2002 and Houston in 2021 — to the Final Four.

This year, they’ve also got a little extra motivational and emotional push.

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As they have been throughout the season, Houston’s players have been competing with heavy hearts following the death of former teammate Reggie Chaney last August.

While the Cougars continue to chase their championship dreams, they do so with an omnipresent reminder of Chaney on the left strap of their jerseys: A black circular patch with a red 32 stitched onto it.

Here’s what you need to know about Chaney, his life, his passing and his impact on Houston basketball:

Reggie Chaney Houston basketball career

A three-star recruit coming out of Findlay Prep in Nevada, Chaney, began his college basketball career at Arkansas, where he played for two seasons from 2018-20.

Following his sophomore season, the 6-foot-8 forward — a Tulsa, Oklahoma native — transferred to Houston. In his first year with the Cougars, he started 13 of the team’s 32 games, including its Elite Eight victory against Oregon State and its Final Four loss to eventual national champion Baylor. The Final Four appearance was Houston’s first since 1984.

Chaney remained a key contributor in each of his next two years at Houston while helping his team remain among the sport’s elite. In his final college season, in 2022-23, he was named the American Athletic Conference sixth man of the year.

Over 104 games at Houston, Chaney averaged 3.6 points, 2.6 rebounds and 0.5 blocks per game while shooting 63.7% from the field.

Reggie Chaney death

On Aug. 21, 2023, shortly after graduating from Houston that May, Chaney was found unresponsive in a bedroom of an Arlington, Texas apartment. The tenant of the unit, a family friend, called the local police.

Paramedics arrived and pronounced Chaney dead at the scene. He was just 23 years old.

Months later, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner said results of an autopsy showed Chaney died from fentanyl toxicity and that his death was an accident.

Chaney’s death occurred just days before he was scheduled to head overseas to begin his professional basketball career.

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Why does Houston wear a No. 32 patch?

Chaney’s sudden passing understandably shook those within the Houston program, many of whom had played with him, coached him, and gotten to know him on a deeply personal level that went beyond the basketball court.

Sampson told Paper City Magazine before the season that he brought in a grief counselor to speak to his players.

“I told them Reggie’s always going to be in our hearts,” Sampson said to the magazine. “That’s why we have memories. While someone near and dear to our hearts left us, we have his memories.”

To honor their late teammate and friend, Houston’s players have worn a black patch on their jerseys this season with Chaney’s number 32 on it. The patch has been visible throughout the season, but it earned a different level of attention last Sunday when Shead mentioned it in a postgame television interview following the Cougars’ 100-95 overtime victory against Texas A&M.

“This patch right here, man,” Shead said. “Coach during halftime was talking about it’s going to be a war and it’s going to hurt and what would 32 do? Reggie Chaney would have fought his ass off. We were built for this. I just miss my dawg.”

Shead wasn’t the only one who had Chaney at the front of his mind in the immediate aftermath of such a hard-earned victory on such a high-profile stage.

"I asked them about Reggie, and as soon as I said it, out of the corner of my eye I saw Jamal got really emotional," Sampson said. "Ramon (Walker Jr.) got really emotional. So that one was for Big Reg."

"We play every game for Reggie," Houston guard Ryan Elvin said, referencing the No. 32 patch the Cougars have worn on their uniforms all season. "Tough games like this, you know, we know he’s with us. This was his type of game, for sure. Reggie was one of the toughest dudes, if not the toughest dude, I’ve ever been around. When it’s hard games like this, we think about him a little bit more. But he’s always with us."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Houston basketball wearing No. 32 patch during 2024 NCAA Tournament