Houston Basketball: Kelvin Sampson’s journey to becoming a top-tier head coach
A look at Sampson’s coaching journey
Sampson has been a head coach at the Division I level since 1987 and has had plenty of success prior to his stint at Houston. He began his career at Washington State in 1987 and in seven seasons and in 1994 he led the other Cougars to their first NCAA Tournament since 1983. Coming off that success he was hired at the place he was probably most known for prior to Houston, Oklahoma.
He spent 12 seasons in Norman replacing Sooner legend Billy Tubbs. He led Oklahoma to 11 trips to the Big Dance in those 12 years that included a Sweet Sixteen, an Elite Eight, and a Final Four in 2002 where ironically his Sooners would lose in the national semifinals to the team that Sampson would find himself coaching in 2006, the Indiana Hoosiers.
They always say that as a coach you never want to follow a legend, but rather follow the guy that follows the legend to lessen the pressure. That is exactly what Sampson did at Indiana, he replaced Mike Davis who replaced the forever face of the Indiana Hoosiers, Robert Montgomery Knight. Sampson won 21 games in his first season with the Hoosiers reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament. But despite beginning the 2007-08 season 22-4 and 11-2 in the Big Ten, his seat was scorching hot due to some serious allegations of violations and on February 22, 2008, he was forced to resign.
Under Sampson, Indiana was shrouded in controversies that led to a three-year investigation that unearthed nearly 600 illegal phone calls to 17 recruits which resulted in a one-year suspension of campus recruiting and phone calls. Ironically, at the same time, Sampson was the President of the NABC and the ethics committee would suspend him for three years making him ineligible to serve in any capacity or receive any honors or perks.
Despite not being allowed to call recruits, an investigation revealed that he took part in conference calls with recruits and assistant coaches were also making impermissible calls. A school investigation uncovered the violations of his suspension and the fact that he lied to school officials about his participation.
In 2008, Indiana was placed on three years’ probation, and hit Sampson with a five-year show-cause penalty which meant any school that wanted to hire Sampson would have the penalties carry over unless they could prove Sampson had “done his time.” Assistant coach Herb Senderoff was hit with a three-year show-cause order of his own for his participation in making phone calls during Sampsons’ suspension. There were many who thought that because of the allegations and penalties, Sampson may never coach at the high-major level again. Thankfully, for the sake of Houston, they were wrong.
After his resignation from Indiana, Sampson didn’t find himself unemployed for long as he was hired by the San Antonio Spurs in an advisory role two weeks later. He would be in that role for about two months because in May he would take a job on the bench of Milwaukee Bucks head coach Scott Skiles. He would spend three seasons in Milwaukee before moving on to a role as an assistant for the Houston Rockets. He would spend three more seasons with the Rockets before the college game would finally come calling again.