Kelvin Sampson's failures could key Houston's biggest success | March Madness 2023

By John Fanta
Published

In 2014, just as he was pondering his coaching future, Kelvin Sampson received a timely call from his father, John.

John Sampson was on bed rest due to central nervous issues and multiple strokes, but phoned his son, who was the acting head coach for the Houston Rockets, temporarily filling in for Kevin McHale. Having spent six years in the NBA ranks as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks and Rockets after a long college career burned out at Indiana due to a five-year show-cause from the NCAA for making impermissible phone calls to recruit, Kelvin Sampson felt he was ready to be a head coach again — this time, in the pros.

"I felt like I had not finished my race," Sampson said. "I felt the only way I could finish it was by being a head coach in the NBA."

John "rarely made his opinion known" about such matters, according to Kelvin's son Kellen. But as an inductee in the 2005 class of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame and a legendary coach at Pembroke Senior High School, his thoughts carried weight.

"He ended up telling me that he felt I would be a really good coach if I went back to the college game," Sampson recalled. "That conversation with my father is something I will never, ever forget because it got me to start thinking about the college route."

That call ended up being the last time he would speak with his dad, who died 36 hours later on Feb. 18 at 84. Less than two months later, at the age of 58, Kelvin Sampson was at a podium being introduced as the head coach at the University of Houston. 

Just like Sampson was ready for a new challenge, the program was badly in need of a boost. After previous coaches James Dickey, Tom Penders and Ray McCallum were promised facility upgrades but the ball never really got rolling on them, Sampson made then-athletic director Mack Rhoades put it in his contract that updates would be made to Hofheinz Pavilion.

"I'm sure I hurt people's feelings when I say this, but it was bad," Sampson said of Houston's facilities and resource situation. "It was way worse than I thought. Just the apathy and the support across campus wasn't good. Every four years, they would hire a coach. In the last 16 years, they had fired four coaches. They had no facilities. The gym they played in was built in 1970. In 2014, they hadn't done much to it. The first thing I saw when I walked into the arena was a plywood suite. I just looked at that and thought we really had our work cut out for us here."

His father's vision has proved prescient. Over the past six years, Sampson has led the Cougars to NCAA Tournaments in each season, compiling a record of 174-33. There was the Final Four two years ago, an Elite Eight last season and a top-three seed line in the field of 68 in three of the last four big dances. This year, Houston earned the second No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and will open action on Thursday at 9:20 p.m. ET against 16th-seeded Northern Kentucky.

Houston's future is bright. But to get here, Sampson had to revisit his past, even the parts he'd rather ignore. He has spent his whole career dealing with humbling moments. From his start amid a frozen Montana landscape to losing his job at the hoops Mecca of Indiana.

"If I could talk to all young coaches, I'd say embrace your failures but learn from them. Don't run from them," Sampson said. "Every failure we have is part of a plan. It forces you to get up when you are knocked down. That's what life is."

Now, he has a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament, family on staff, and a team built in his own image — gritty, tough and relentless. And a chance to play in the Final Four in the school's hometown.

*** *** ***

Sampson can trace his work ethic back to his roots.

"The hardest-working people that I knew growing up were my mother and her family," he said. 

Neither of his grandparents went to high school, he said, working as sharecroppers instead in tobacco and cotton. Growing up, Sampson worked alongside them when he wasn't cutting grass for $2 a lawn. 

"I had a nice little side gig going. I tied my gas can to my longboard and I would just push it around, and pull it with my bicycle. That's what I did until I could work the tobacco farms with my father," he said. 

His father's coaching job was only a nine-month contract, so the other three months he sold encyclopedias and insurance, taught driver's education and worked the tobacco market.

"He had four jobs every summer just to make ends meet," he said of John.

So when Sampson was tasked with more humbling tasks while pursuing his dream, it didn't bother him. He went to Michigan State to pursue a master's degree in coaching and administration after a successful playing career at Division II Pembroke State University (now UNC Pembroke), and Spartans head coach Jud Heathcote allowed Sampson to be a part of the program in an unofficial capacity for a season — 1978-79, the year Michigan State won its first national championship. 

"One of the great things about that time was that a lot of the major programs had JV teams," Sampson said. "That's how I got my break at Michigan State. I was only 23 years old and a grad assistant, manager and a floor-sweeper. I would just help in whatever way I could." 

While Sampson was watching Heathcote work with Magic Johnson, Greg Kelser and Jay Vincent, he was also getting ready to run the Spartans summer camps as a grad assistant. His roommate during the summer camps? A guy named Tom Izzo.

"Jud had three different leagues in the camp: rookies, minors, majors. I was commissioner of one of the leagues and Tom was the commissioner of the other league," Sampson said of the now-Hall of Famer, who was an assistant coach at his alma mater Northern Michigan at the time. "[Izzo] was intense, and Jud was a taskmaster." 

After he achieved his master's in East Lansing, Sampson was offered a fellowship opportunity by Michigan State University to pursue his doctorate. 

"I was having trouble getting into college coaching, and I thought the opportunity to get a Ph.D. would make my mother proud," Sampson said. 

Sampson combined his studies in Kinesiology and most classes taking place in the school of pathology by sending letters to different schools across the country looking for a job. With his father's connections in North Carolina and Heathcote going to bat for him with a letter of recommendation, Sampson thought UNC Wilmington might give him an opportunity. When they turned him down, he started thinking he would never get a college coaching chance and that perhaps following his dad's footsteps at Pembroke Senior High would be the safe way to go for his career.

"Embrace your failures, but learn from them. Don't run from them," Sampson said. (Elsa Hasch/Allsport)

But then Fred Paulsen, the JV coach at Montana Tech, an NAIA school, approached Sampson with an opportunity to be an assistant at the school for $1,100 a year if he was willing to teach classes at the school as well. 

"If I didn't have that master's degree, there's no way I'm getting that job," Sampson quipped.

"I was making $150 a month at Michigan State to be a grad assistant, so my first opportunity in actual coaching was a $700 pay cut," Sampson said with a laugh. He consulted with his wife, Karen, who signed off on it.

"The fact she was willing to pick up everything we have, throw it into a 15-foot U-Haul, and go from Michigan to Montana said it all to me," Sampson said. "You need a great, understanding wife in all of this, there's no doubt about that." 

So, after a year as an assistant, at the age of 25, Sampson was handed the keys to the program for his first coaching job. But there was plenty of work ahead.

*** *** ***

In Butte, Sampson was the school's sixth coach in three years, taking over a team at an engineering college where every degree required a minimum of 30 credits. He had an assistant coach who sold insurance and helped him part-time. Another coached defensive backs for the football team and then slid over to basketball. And there were other challenges, so to speak.

"I had a blue Renegade CJ7 soft-top Jeep. Every morning, I would go out to crank my Jeep and I was sitting on a block of ice. You could literally take a hammer and break the vinyl because it was frozen," he said. "And then I found out I had to go get a head bolt heater in my Jeep because all of the fluids in the car would freeze because of how cold it was. There were a lot of days where Karen and I would look at each other and say, ‘Where the hell are we? What are we doing right now?'"

But the opportunity allowed him to begin developing his coaching style. Year 1 brought failure (7-22 overall, and 0-15 in the Frontier Conference) and Sampson admitted that he felt bad for the players because he felt like every coach in the league was outdoing him. But in Year 2, the program turned, with Sampson going 22-9. Sampson led Montana Tech to conference championships in 1984 and 1985.

At that point, his name was starting to circulate for bigger jobs. Heathcote put in a word to Pac-10 member Washington State that they should hire Sampson. At the age of 31, he received a two-year deal worth $41,000 per year. 

"At the time, that told me they would let me coach until they found the guy who could really coach, who they really wanted," Sampson said. "When I got to Washington State … you feel like those border buffalo crossing the Serengeti River and the lions are over there waiting for the weak and the old. I always felt like I was at the end of the line and the lions would get me every game."

There was no progress in the first three years — he nonetheless survived the first two-year deal — with Year 3 leading to a humiliating mark of 7-22. In his final four years, though, he finished over .500 in each campaign and had a pair of 20-win seasons. When he powered the Cougars to just their fourth NCAA Tournament in program history in 1994, and first in 11 years, that sent Sampson interest across the country into high gear, and landed him at Oklahoma.

Sampson celebrates with Nolan Johnson after guiding Oklahoma to the 2001 Big 12 championship. He led the Sooners to 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in 12 seasons, including the Final Four in 2002. (Brian Bahr/ALLSPORT)

Coaching the Sooners, Sampson established himself as one of the most consistent coaches in America. His teams made 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in 12 years. Three Sweet 16 appearances, a Final Four in 2002 and an Elite Eight in 2003 highlighted the run.

With Sampson maxed out with the Sooners in 2006 and as one of the sport's big names, the thought was that if he could make Oklahoma a consistent power in the Big 12, what could he do at a school with even more resources and tradition with basketball?

That's what led him to Assembly Hall, where he took over at Indiana in 2006. 

*** *** ***

Recruiting was going strong. The Hoosiers won an NCAA Tournament game and racked up 21 victories in Sampson's first season at the helm. 

Eric Gordon and Jordan Crawford headlined the nation's seventh-best recruiting class in 2007. Indiana was viewed as a potential Final Four-caliber squad, receiving a preseason top-10 ranking and starting the year at 22-4. And then, it all came to a sudden end. 

The NCAA sent a Notice of Allegations to Indiana University that advised Sampson and other members of his coaching staff were charged with potentially "major" recruiting violations. Athletic director Rick Greenspan was directed by university president Michael A. McRobbie to review the allegations to check their credibility.

"I just think the situation at Indiana was unfortunate," Sampson said. "That would be how I would view it. It's unfortunate. But, you know, it's a life lesson. Everything you do in life is an experience. There's not always good experiences, but they are experiences nonetheless. I don't think you're looking at things the right way unless you say, ‘How do I go from here? How do I grow from this?' It was a life lesson. We moved on, and now I have the best job I ever had."

His son looks back at it a bit differently.

"It was Indiana trying to be protective of its image," said Kellen Sampson, who was a grad assistant working for his father before the departure and now works as an assistant at Houston. "In 2008, there was a paranoia with the NCAA. In 2023, institutions have chosen to protect the head coach at all costs. In 2008, IU just reacted abundantly prematurely. I can tell you this: we don't live in regret." 

"We don't live in regret," said Kellen Sampson, shown here to the left of Kelvin on Houston's bench on Jan. 29, 2020. (Greg Thompson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Sampson got the initial itch to go to the NBA just 48 hours after he resigned from Indiana. Five-time NBA champion Gregg Popovich offered him a slot in San Antonio to serve as a consultant with the Spurs. The two men spent time together in 2002 with the USA Men's Basketball World Championship Team, and Popovich grew fond of Sampson. 

That's what led Sampson to six years of what he calls postgraduate learning of the sport, and he believes the NBA was a silver lining that allowed him to get more free time in the offseasons with his father in Pembroke. It also made him a better coach and prepared him to take over at the University of Houston. Sampson credits what he learned over the course of his six years in the NBA to the concepts he uses in the college game now in producing one of the nation's best programs.

"I learned sides of the game I never knew," Sampson said. "When I got to Milwaukee as an assistant [in 2008], I learned the most because I was lucky to be around Scott Skiles, Jim Boylan, Lionel Hollins and Joe Wolf. I learned how to think outside the box. They helped me so much." 

*** *** ***

In Houston, Sampson built a family affair. 

With his father's advice and vision in mind, Kelvin decided to ask his son Kellen to join the staff and his daughter Lauren to take on the director of basketball operations role. 

"My dad said to me, ‘I'm not coming back to the college game unless you are all in,' Kellen said. 

Kellen had just been fired by Appalachian State after his boss Jason Capel was let go following a 53-70 record in four seasons. The timing worked out for Kellen to join his dad and run the Cougars.

"I said, ‘Hell yeah, you kidding me?!' when he asked me to come on at Houston," Kellen said. "His mom and dad had just passed, I had gotten fired again for a second time, my mom and sister were living in Charlotte at the time. This opportunity would bring us all together. It just felt right."

Over the last half-decade, Sampson's group has been as tough as any team in college basketball. 

"Honestly, the practices are harder than the games most of the time," senior guard Marcus Sasser said. "Coach gets you to hit a level that you didn't even know you could hit yourself."

Where does that toughness come from to produce the nation's second-best scoring defense at 56.5 points per game allowed? 

"I think a lot of the way you coach comes from your roots," Sampson said. " I don't like people to make excuses and I don't like victims. Most kids want to be really good, but they just don't know how. There's an art to getting kids outside of their comfort zones, and getting them to a point where they can see the results that they get. I still coach for the best reason, to help kids become the best they can be."

Could the Cougars win a national championship next month in the host city of Houston? It's something that Sasser said has been the vision since Day 1 of the players' workouts when they came in for the fall semester.

The Cougars dropped the AAC championship game with Sasser out due to a groin injury, but the expectations are that Houston's star guard will be good to go for the NCAA Tournament. 

Sampson will continue to lean on the experiences that made him into the coach he is today, with plenty more to navigate ahead. 

Houston is joining the Big 12 conference and will begin competition in the league this fall. The Big 12 is already the best conference in America. Adding Houston, along with BYU, Cincinnati and UCF, only bolsters it and double-digit NCAA Tournament bids could be on the table in a given season. It's something Sampson isn't exactly thrilled about. 

"It's great for our university. Obviously, for basketball, the goal is to make the NCAA Tournament and advance and get to a Final Four. For us in basketball, it's not necessarily great for us," Sampson said. "The truth is, it's not. We were doing everything we strive to do in the American. But for us to progress as a university and as an athletic department, we need to be in the Big 12. But it's going to be hard because it's a huge step up." 

What life has been for the Cougars and their fan base is a golden age of Houston hoops, the best since Phi Slama Jama in the 1980s with Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. 

When the program made the Final Four in 2021, it was its first appearance since 2014. That all goes back to the leader, something he takes great pride in. 

"What I will be proud of when my career is finished," Sampson said, "is how much better this place is now from when I got here. That's the goal of every coach." 

"When I leave, for the next coach, it gives me a lot of comfort knowing that he's taking over a much better job from the place I found it."

Now 67 and at the peak of his powers, Sampson didn't hesitate when asked if he would ever consider another avenue. 

"This is my last job," he said. "No question." 

John Fanta is a national college basketball broadcaster and writer for FOX Sports. He covers the sport in a variety of capacities, from calling games on FS1 to serving as lead host on the BIG EAST Digital Network to providing commentary on The Field of 68 Media Network. Follow him on Twitter @John_Fanta.

Read more: