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"Houston: Kelvin Sampson
Grade: B-plus
This was the right job for Sampson and the right hire for Houston. The Coogs are trying to establish themselves as a year-over-year top-five program in the American. If Sampson (83-48 in four seasons) stays on for, say, another eight years (no sure thing, of course) then I think that definitely happens. UH is a program like few others in college basketball. From about 1950 until around 1985, it was unquestionably a top-30 school in college basketball.
Then the well dried up. Houston’s 2018 NCAA Tournament victory was its first since 1984, which means that Houston’s first-round win over San Diego State was the school’s first Big Dance victory since Akeem Olajuwon won in the Final Four in 1984. That is wild. "
You’ll notice that none of those coaches - CKS included - has had a single deep run in the Tournament. I’m sure that has a lot to do with the grading curve.
If he would have mentioned the disappointing losses in the AAC and NIT tourneys prior to this season, then his grading is probably not too far off. I would give Sampson an A++ for this past season as he over delivered from my perspective. But he was 0-4 in post-season games in years 2 and 3 – which given the way those teams finished the season, that was disappointing. I think this season should have raised his grade to at least an A- and trending upward.
You can ding him for a small sample size all you want but 2015-16 and 2016-17 were incredible coaching jobs by CKS. We basically had half a D1 roster in 2014-15 and in the 2 successive seasons we were back in the postseason and posted our best 2 KenPom seasons ever (prior to this one obviously).
I said “at least an A-”. I don’t think that is being too critical. I said prior to the AAC tournament that post-season success was the only thing missing from Sampson’s time at UH. If you want to give him a pass for being a #2 seed in the AAC tourney in Year 2 and losing to a Tulane team that only won 3 AAC games and had a lame duck coach, that is fine. Year 3 was a little more understandable as a #3 seed losing to a .500 / #6 seed UConn team playing on its home court (even though UH swept the 2 regular season match ups). His overall body of work is really good and his overall in-game strategy is the best since at least Foster.
The point of my original post was I don’t see how the writer arrived at a B+ grade without citing the post-season issues in two of the four seasons.
Yeah, I think we pretty much agree. I guess I’m more just overreacting because of I think an insane minority that thought CKS should’ve been on a hot seat going into this past season.
If they could not see the foundation being built upon every season, then it’s a shame. Even Season 1, you could see the change in culture by the end of the year. Basketball seems to be in very good hands for right now. I can only assume age and/or past NCAA history were the reasons Sampson’s name did not come up in offseason rumors.
No Doubt. 4yrs ago did we have a BB program. What Coach Sampson has done, whether he lost this game or that one, is resurrected our BB program to where it should always be, what seed will we be this year. I’m sure Coach Lewis is smiling.
B is a fair grade for both, its not grading the trajectory of the program, its grading what they did in the 4 years. remove recency bias (favoring newer years) haith has been to a nit and a ncaa tourney in his 4 years…he accomplished a lot in his 4 years…he just has the program on A downward trajectory (and trajectory is pure speculation)
remove the recency bias on sampson, we lost inexcusable games every single year, including arguably the worst back to back loss in school history…we had horrible schedules the first 3 years, horrible AAC tourney record b4 this year, & bad recruiting before quannas came on board and had to rely on risk recruits…
Haith is a b on the first 4 years, and a D- in program trajectory over the next 4 years
Sampson is a b+ on the first 4 years, and a A+++ in program trajectory over the next 4 years
The grade should easily be an A. His inherited players in his first year were Stiggers, Barnes, Knowles, Rose, McLean, Bowser and JC Washington. There are things really I liked about most of those guys and they played their butts off and were great representatives for our school, but not a single one of those guys should be more than maybe a seventh man on a balanced team with any legitimate shot at getting an at large tourney bid.
In a four year span he’s made two NITs, was a 6 seed in the tourney and came within a fluke shot of the sweet 16 and likely further.
In the 22 years before he took over we made 4 NITs and 1 moderately flukey auto bid tourney appearance.
Very few coaches could have done this. Easily an A.
“Bad recruiting” that brought in the program’s best player in many years (Gray), the first NBA draftee since 2001 (Dotson), the conference 6th man (Brooks), a potential 4 year starter (GRob) and other solid college bigs (Pollard, DDavis).
Kelvin Sampson is 10000X the coach idiots like you deserve.
“had to rely on risk recruits” this is clearly written in my statement…im not sure if you are aware of the past of dotson or pollard…
sampson has said it was pure luck we got rob gray…he had turned everyone away in plans to sign with Tennessee…literally on his recruiting visit to commit their coach was fired and the new coach didnt offer…houston was his only option then…sampson has told this story numerous times
sampson just 3 weeks ago said it is crazy the level of recruiting we have now, compared to then…insinuating just how bad it was…sampson doesnt deny we were bad at recruiting his 1st 3 years
you have the temperament of a child …try to have conversations without name calling
Pesik, if nothing else you are 100% wrong in that Gray had an active offer from Memphis that you can find on the interwebs (he visited them on 4/11, well after Tyndall was fired and right before he committed here). I believe there were still other offers and other schools looking at him but can’t confirm that beyond his offer from Memphis. There was also the story during the tourney in the Chronicle about Sampson saying that he got really lucky that Rob and his dad ran into Carl Lewis on their recruiting trip because Rob’s dad went full-on fanboi and that probably helped Rob commit here.
rob had cancelled his visit with memphis (recruiting sites just didnt update, and he visited tenn before the firing, look at date of tweet) and i noted how the firing wasnt what caused him to come here, it was the new coach not offering, he already decided to commit to Tennessee regardless of coach …he had turned away everyone… he was deciding between tech, memphis and Tennessee…houston was the only school recruiting him that he hadnt already visited or cancelled a visit with yet (turned away to get Tennessee)
again Sampson is the one who tells the story like that, Sampson is the one who called it extremely lucky to get rob
I’m still not sure that timing works out for Memphis the way you say it did. Tyndall got fired on 3/26. Barnes was hired on 3/30. On 4/6 there’s a tweet (which you posted) that Rob’s visit to Memphis was cancelled. It looks like that’s probably around the date it was cancelled because Memphis offered another JUCO guard the day after. When did he visit us? It it was that 4/4 weekend right after Stiggers signed with an agent then the timing would have made sense for him to cancel that visit with Memphis if he had us as his primary backup plan in case Barnes didn’t offer.
It’s possible Memphis moved on while Rob was waiting on Barnes to offer. But it doesn’t seem like Rob would have cancelled that trip without an offer in hand from Tennessee.