Houston Basketball: Kelvin Sampson’s journey to becoming a top-tier head coach

Sampson is rebuilding both his standing and the standing of the program

It was in the summer of 2015 that Sampson began laying the foundation for what has become one of the premier programs in all of college basketball. His first recruiting class included freshman Rob Gray and Oregon transfer Damyean Dotson who would lead the team to 20-win seasons and back-to-back NIT berths over the next two seasons.

It wasn’t just in the win column where they improved, in 2015-16 they scored nearly 78 points per game, up from 64 in Sampson’s first year. They also jumped up to 21st in the country in offensive efficiency in 2016 after ranking 232nd the previous season.

The elite defense that the Sampson Cougars have made their calling card was a little slower to come along compared to the offense. Over his first two seasons, Houston was a middle-of-the-pack team defensively, but in 2016-17 they jumped exactly 100 spots up to 79th in defensive efficiency, and the Houston defensive train was off and running.

By the end of the 2017 season, the Houston train had left the station, but the question was how fast and how far could it go? The emphatic answers to those questions are both fast and far. Since 2017-18 the Cougars have been the measuring stick in the AAC, averaging over 28 wins per season, three first-place finishes in the conference, and what would’ve been five straight trips to the NCAA Tournament had the 2020 season even not been canceled that included an Elite Eight and Final Four.