KELVIN SAMPSON IS TWO VICTORIES AWAY FROM EMERGING AS A COACHING GIANT
College basketball didn’t need him when he was violating NCAA rules, but these days, he's admired for remaining at Houston and eyeing a title when coaches and players are leaving in disturbing numbers
Coaches bolt for Villanova and flip their noses at Maryland, which angers ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, a screechy fanboy at 58. More than 2,000 players are eligible to leave and want up to $2 million in NIL money. A relentless departure timetable has overtaken the entirety of college basketball, via monster egos and transfer portals, and we almost view the Final Four as secondary to the spinning circus.
But Kelvin Sampson, of all people, is happy where he is and heading nowhere until his dying coaching day. He might win the national championship at Houston. All of which remains incredulous to those who saw him dismissed at Indiana, where he made more than 100 impermissible phone calls and violated NCAA rules.
He was supposed to fade away. But Sampson spent time recuperating with Gregg Popovich and resumed his career as an NBA assistant coach. Then he signed with the Cougars, in a gym where few attended games, and in the last five years, he has reached two Final Fours, the Elite Eight and two Sweet 16s. In the best game of the tournament, he will face Duke in the semifinals Saturday night. He is capable of beating Cooper Flagg and coach Jon Scheyer, as father figure Mike Krzyzewski suggested this week.
“He's really one of the great coaches,” he said. “The one thing that's never changed with him is he's a lifelong learner of the game. And really a culture guy. Before saying anything about what happened on the court, I watched their bench and their interaction with one another. They are a together team. I mean, really together. Their faces, their support of one another, how they listened to their coaching staff — exquisite, really exquisite stuff.”
Quietly, without the fuss of legends, Sampson would flush the commode of 2008 and renew himself as a great who has 723 victories. Today, whatever he did to incinerate himself would be permitted and encouraged in the NIL era. He is a 20th-century hardass who is admired by his players, as Coach K said, and he has lured sellout crowds in a town where the NBA Rockets have been admired. This is a man knocked down by a system — deservedly so — and he has reappeared as a demon who makes Popovich very proud. He is doing so in San Antonio, where his team is ready to make history as Popovich recovers from a stroke.
“Not as happy as you, Karen, and the family and your whole program,” Sampson read Popovich’s text, “built with grit, character and love.”
“There’s one more thing he needs to accomplish to solidify everything he’s done, and that’s a national championship,” Houston forward J’Won Roberts said. “Being in this situation, with two games left, why not do it for him?”
What’s amazing is that Sampson brings heat when players supposedly are sick of it. He refuses to recruit “entitlement players” and wants only his people, those who “allow me to coach them the way I want to coach them, and that’s important.” He looks around the sport and sees failure. Just because he found trouble in the Big Ten doesn’t mean he’s softening, at 69.
“I think the coaches that fail at every level are coaches that are passive-aggressive. Passive-aggressive coaches are usually afraid to hold kids accountable,” he said. “If you are going to build a culture, the first thing you have to come to grips with — you’re going to have confrontations.”
His program continues to thrive despite early-season workouts, when players reported to 5 a.m. sessions and performed 100-meter sprints in south Texas weather. He checked into LeBron James’ training methods and installed machines known as VersaClimbers. “And I go, I like the VersaClimber, because they hate it,” Sampson said. “That thing is a problem. And our guys, it just puts them on their knees.”
“It’s easily the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. Easily,” Roberts said. “I feel like it hurts more when you get off. When you’re on it, you’re pushing, you’re pushing. But when you get off, it’s like your legs burned.”
Games are not fun to watch. Physicality and the country’s top-scoring defense prevail. Those who don’t like Duke want Sampson to throttle Flagg. Last Sunday, Sampson taped a slogan in the locker room: “2 DOGS, 1 BONE, SAN ANTONIO!!!” He whipped Tennessee in Indianapolis, just up the road from Bloomington, where time has passed but his daughter and wife understood the significance.
“To do it here,” they told reporters.
Compared to Scheyer, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl and Florida’s Todd Golden, Sampson is the best coach remaining. Didn’t he prove it in the Sweet 16? With 2.8 seconds left, the game was tied against Purdue. Houston had the ball. He thought about calling “Virginia Tech,” known in his world as VT, because he likes vodka tonics. Instead, he called a brilliant inbounds play. Milos Uzan threw the ball to Joseph Tugler, who returned a pass to Uzan, who scored easily.
“I told our coaches that when they become head coaches, don't try to be the smartest guy in the room by drawing up a tricky play at the end of the game,” Sampson said. “Run something that you're practiced.”
At this point, he isn’t bothered much in a town where C.J. Stroud, the Astros and the Rockets win attention. “I love the fact that you can go around the city and nobody knows who you are. I really like that,” he said. “You can stop and get gas and a million people will ride by. I love Houston.” But two more victories will make him the king.
And no matter which program might chase him, he’s an anchor in a sport of wanderers. “I’ve had a lifetime contract here for a long time. I’ll decide when it’s time to go,” he said. Not that he’s thinking about it.
“We have a great game, we still have great kids. Our kids do well in NIL and I’m thankful it hasn’t changed them,” Sampson said. “I hear the horror stories. I think the horror stories are more the minority, but it’s still a great game. It’s a game where you can teach good values, teach kids it’s OK to make mistakes, it's OK to get up when you get knocked down. While everything is growing exponentially in areas I had no idea even existed, it’s still a great game.”
Once, the sport couldn’t wait to dump him. Today, he’s just what it needs.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.