Sampson holds the trophy for winning the Midwest Regional surrounded by Cougars players. / Robert Goddin-Imagn Images
INDIANAPOLIS—In Saturday’s media availability before the Houston Cougars faced the Tennessee Volunteers for a spot in the Final Four, a reporter asked Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson a question that started: “You guys haven’t been to a Final Four since 2021.”
Sampson cut in: “Really? It’s been that long?”
At any other point in Houston’s basketball history since “Phi Slama Jama,” that sentence would’ve been hard to fathom. But over the last five years, Houston has been knocking on the door of a championship more consistently than any other school in the sport. Included in that stretch: five top-five KenPom finishes, five trips to the second weekend, four conference titles, three No. 1 seeds. They moved up to the Big 12, at the time the most feared conference in the sport, and quickly ripped through it to the tune of 34–4 in two seasons. Only in Sampson’s world, one where expectations of everyone from star players to student managers are sky high, is the current standard not quite enough.
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And so Sunday’s performance, a vintage Houston dismantling of a Tennessee team that profiled as one of the few that could match the Cougars’ toughness and discipline, had to be cathartic for Sampson & Co. For as many wins (131 to be exact) since that last Final Four, the few March losses were devastating. In 2022, Sampson squeezed every drop out of a team that missed star guard Marcus Sasser for the season’s final three months, but a 1-of-20 shooting day from deep held the Cougars to just 44 points against Jay Wright’s final Villanova team in an Elite Eight loss. The next year was supposed to be the year, with Sasser back healthy, a top-10 NBA draft pick in Jarace Walker and the Final Four in its home city. Instead, the usually stingy Coogs got torched for 89 points by the Miami Hurricanes in the Sweet 16. And the ’24 loss might have been the most gutting of all, with star point guard and heartbeat of the program Jamal Shead suffering an ankle injury early in the Sweet 16 against the Duke Blue Devils. He had to watch as the Cougars offense withered away and with it, the Cougars’ hopes of breaking through.
“It [didn’t] feel like a fair fight,” Sampson said after that loss. “You would have to take maybe two of theirs to equal one of Jamal. That’s how good he was.”
Replacing Shead made this season’s pursuit of the Houston breakthrough perhaps its most challenging yet. Shead was the on-court embodiment of Sampson, perhaps the sport’s best leader and on-ball defender in addition to being one of the top floor generals in the country. With Oklahoma Sooners transfer Milos Uzan adjusting to the position, Houston went just 4–3 in November and didn’t beat a ranked team until late-January.
All they did from there? Go 30–1 in their next 31 games, treating Big 12 opponents like the AAC teams they regularly dispatched earlier in Sampson’s tenure. They’re a late blown lead against the Texas Tech Red Raiders away from an unthinkable 31-game winning streak, which would have been the longest such streak since Gonzaga’s 31–0 start in 2020–21. They have a school record for wins in a season locked up at 34, a chance to chase two more, and the program’s first national championship just 200 miles from campus in San Antonio.
“This is the 11th team I’ve had at Houston,” Sampson said. “We won 30-plus games five times, but this is the first time we won 34 games. And I’m glad these guys did it. The maturity of our older guys has been great for our younger guys.”
As for the latest chapter in this dominant four months of Cougar basketball, Houston left no doubt with its physical dominance of a Tennessee team used to physically dominating.
The Vols found the paint essentially shut off entirely in the first 20 minutes, mustering just six paint points in the first half to compound their 1-of-15 mark from beyond the arc. Meanwhile, Houston took it to Tennessee on the other end, grabbing nine offensive rebounds and generating nearly as many second-chance points (11) as Tennessee’s entire first-half tally (15).
“Their second-chance opportunities were big and we felt like we got some shots, but we didn’t knock down some of those early [and] we weren’t able to get anything really inside,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. “But, again, the second-chance points early, when you’re shooting as poorly as we were, those were hard. Those second-chance points are hard to overcome.”
Sharp shoots the ball against Tennessee guard Jahmai Mashack. / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images
The Vols drew a bit closer in the second half, drawing back from what was once a 22-point deficit to as close as 10 with 5:42 to go in the game. But then came a Houston offensive flurry from beyond the arc, a big part of the recipe all season and a reason why this Cougars team could be the one to break through and win it all. The No. 1 three-point shooting team in the sport made four triples in fewer than three minutes to regain the separation and ensure the final score was never in doubt. Three of them came from Emanuel Sharp, who finished with 16 points (14 of which came after halftime). But that didn’t loosen Sampson’s intensity at all, locked in as ever, coaching his guys to the elite standard he expects until the final buzzer. As thousands of orange-clad fans streamed toward the exits in the closing minutes, Sharp closed out too hard on Tennessee star Chaz Lanier and fouled him on a three. Even if it wouldn’t mean anything to the eventual result, Sampson was none too pleased with his veteran guard.
“You hit him,” Sampson barked. “Yes. It’s a foul. It’s a dumb foul. A DUMB foul.”
Even as the buzzer sounded on the 69–50 Midwest Regional final win, Sampson’s stoicism didn’t break. He shared a few hugs with his staff, then that stone-faced look returned as he headed toward the handshake line with Barnes, his longtime friend, on the other side. He was so focused, in fact, that he nearly forgot to hug the closest member of his coaching staff: associate head coach (and Kelvin’s son) Kellen Sampson. After the initial rebuff, Kellen tapped his dad/boss on the shoulder to get his attention. What followed was the bear hug of the day, a rare show of emotion from the coach who’s always on his way to the next assignment.
“When I turned around and saw my son and my daughter, my two grandkids and my wife, I felt good for them, too, because they have to put up with a cranky old coach sometimes,” Sampson said. “It’s good to be able to share this with your family, and that’s what’s most important to me.”
As nets were being cut and confetti strewn across the floor, I showed Kellen Sampson a video of the interaction between the two masterminds of the most consistently elite program in college basketball. He smiled, then responded in classic Sampson fashion.
“Gotta recruit. Everyone in America’s gotta see that. Family atmosphere!”
Like father, like son.
