SAN ANTONIO – Roughly five years ago, somewhere between nothing and everything, Fran Fraschilla asked Kelvin Sampson why.
In the wake of his ugly exit from Indiana after NCAA violations, Sampson had transitioned to the NBA, where he spent more than six years as an adviser and assistant coach. Sampson built for himself a sturdy reputation in the pros, so much so that he started to look like an appealing candidate for a head coaching job there.
Then, in 2014, he left the Houston Rockets’ staff to become head coach at University of Houston, an American Athletic school with one NCAA Tournament appearance in 22 years.
The Cougars — by this point a generation removed from the halcyon days of Phi Slamma Jamma and three consecutive Final Fours under Guy Lewis in the 1980s — had tried everything. Pat Foster went to three tournaments in seven years and never won a game in the NCAAs. Alvin Brooks, Ray McCallum, Tom Penders, James Dickey and program legend Clyde Drexler all combined for one tournament appearance.
Once, in those early days, Sampson found himself commiserating to his wife, Karen, who eventually grew so tired of her husband’s complaints she turned the conversation around.
“She said, ‘Why don’t you stop talking about what you don’t have and focus on what you do have?’” Sampson said Sunday, remembering the moment. “I said, ‘We don’t have nothin.”
That’s a long time ago now. Saturday night, Houston will play Duke in its second Final Four appearance in five years. The Cougars have become a model for roster consistency in an era of transience, a standard bearer for tough-love coaching the sport increasingly considers outdated and, very simply, one of the best programs in the country.
None of which answered Fraschilla’s question those years ago, when he asked Sampson what brought him back to college.
“I needed,” Sampson told Fraschilla, “something to fix.”
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Kelvin Sampson fixing Houston basketball and reputation
Fraschilla, a longtime coach and ESPN analyst, wondered, when Sampson told him he took the Houston job looking for “something to fix,” whether his ambition held two meanings.
“He wanted something to fix the way he fixed Montana Tech or Washington State or Oklahoma,” Fraschilla said, “And in fixing Houston, I think he also fixed what he perceives as his reputation.”
It’s been 17 years since Sampson was let go at Indiana, after less than two years coaching the five-time national champions. Once, the Hoosiers hoped he might do in Bloomington what he’s now doing in Houston, but instead NCAA infractions related to impermissible contact with recruits — including repeat offenses while on probation — led the school to dismiss him in February of his second season. He had previously been cited for similar violations at Oklahoma.
Contextualizing those misdeeds now is difficult. Most of the actual rule-breaking involved calling recruits too often, or in restricted circumstances, crimes that seem petty in comparison to some that followed them. In fact, realizing players knew how to fence communication better than anyone else, the NCAA relaxed or eliminated most of the rules Sampson broke not long after his dismissal.
“They almost look nickel-dime now,” Fraschilla said.
After serving a five-year show-cause working in the NBA with Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, Scott Skiles in Milwaukee and Kevin McHale in Houston, Sampson returned to the college game with what Fraschilla called “a Ph. D in basketball.”
But Sampson’s demands on his players remain the same, and so even as he applies modern concepts of pace and spacing, Sampson’s teams still play with his familiar ruggedness.
“This is not easy to replicate,” Fraschilla said. “What they’ve got right now is really old-school, and I don’t know if it’s possible anymore.”
Kelvin Sampson creates standard for Houston basketball
Sampson spent most of last weekend in Indianapolis holding court like a 69-year-old coach who’s seen almost everything.
He deadpanned jokes about doubling his melatonin dose to sleep after a 10:29 p.m. Friday night tipoff against Purdue, and spun yarns about playing against Rick Barnes’ Lenoir-Rhyne teams when Sampson was at UNC Pembroke 50 years ago.
In a matchup of longtime friends, Houston beat Barnes and Tennessee in the Elite Eight to secure their Final Four spot
Sampson arrives to San Antonio this weekend the dean of the coaching foursome. Bruce Pearl is just four years younger, but Sampson was still at Oklahoma when Todd Golden began playing college basketball, and his first year at Indiana was Jon Scheyer’s first in college.
His resume stretches back far enough that Sampson worked under Jud Heathcote at Michigan State, coached against Lute Olson and Bob Knight during his seven years at Washington State, and won coach of the year from what was then still known as the Big Eight Conference.
Which is why there is something undeniably old-school about the way Sampson conducts a program that doesn’t lean on transfers, doesn’t lose many players to the portal and has a rolling four-year Academic Progress Rate score of 984 (out of 1000).
Two of the Cougars’ five likely starting five Saturday against the Blue Devils are transfers, but only one arrived last offseason. The other three have played a combined 11 seasons at Houston.
“Our guys come back. Our guys don’t transfer. We don’t have a portal program,” Sampson said. “I wouldn’t know how to do that. Our program’s our program. We do it the way we do it, and it’s been consistently good for a long time.”
It works because Sampson does.
He recruits players he’s confident will respond to his uncompromising style. Who will embrace the early morning runs in the south Texas heat. Who will attack, defend and rebound with an intensity that makes games feel like they should come with a hail warning.
“When you come in as a freshman, you don’t know what he’s talking about. You think he’s just getting on you, screaming at you,” sixth-year senior J’Wan Roberts said. “But 99.9% of everything coach Sampson says, he’s right. When you get into this program, he has a standard you have to get to, and he’s not going to lower his standard to yours.”
Is this season Kelvin Sampson’s masterpiece?
Sampson’s results are the confirming evidence. After a 13-19 first year at Houston, he hasn’t won fewer than 21 games in the 10 seasons since. He needed three years to steer the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament and hasn’t missed since. Houston has reached the Sweet 16 of the last six tournaments and three of the last five Elite Eights. This is their second national semifinal in five years.
This team might be Sampson’s masterpiece. It’s already won more games (34) than any other he’s coached, thanks to last weekend’s victory against Tennessee. It couples his hard-nosed principles to modern staples like excellent 3-point shooting and enviable court spacing.
And it reflects Sampson down to the pixel. When he called his team together to discuss the baseline out-of-bounds play that eventually beat Purdue in the Sweet 16, Sampson said later he didn’t need to draw it on his white board. His team — including his one transfer, Milos Uzan, the inbounder who also scored the game-winning basket on the play — already knew it down to the second. He did anyway, purely because, in his words, “those timeouts were so damn long.”
“I’m not smart enough to occupy three minutes eight times a game,” Sampson said.
His career record would beg to differ.
Sampson is two wins away from 800, which would put him in rarified air. His third Final Four stands him alongside Nolan Richardson, Ben Howland, Eddie Sutton, Bill Self, Joe B. Hall, John Thompson and Phog Allen.
Houston has lost just once since Nov. 30, and it brings the nation’s longest winning streak — 17 games — with them to San Antonio.
From having nothing, Sampson is now so close to everything, still doing it the way he always has — with hard work, togetherness and family.
“When we talk on the phone, you can still hear it in his voice that he hasn’t let down,” Barnes said. “When he went to the NBA, I’m not sure if he thought he would ever come back to college. It’s been great to have him back in the game. He would tell you he’s been extremely blessed.”
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.