With a 69-50 Midwest Regional Final victory over No. 2 seed Tennessee, the Houston Cougars are heading to the program’s seventh Final Four and the second under head coach Kelvin Sampson. In his 21st NCAA Tournament appearance, Sampson is just two wins away from his first national championship, but no matter how his Cougars play in San Antonio next weekend, Sampson deserves to be considered an all-time great, and even without a title, he has a case as the best coach in the country.
Most wins in the NCAA Tournament over the past five years:
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) March 30, 2025
Houston: 15
Connecticut: 13
Gonzaga: 13
The UConn Huskies steamrolled their way to back-to-back national championships under Dan Hurley, but couldn’t maintain that level of success this season, bowing out in the second round after nearly upsetting the West Region’s top-seeded Florida Gators. Now, with five-straight Sweet 16 appearances and a Final Four in 2021, Sampson is the winningest coach in the NCAA Tournament over the last five years, ahead of Hurley and Gonzaga’s Mark Few.
Sampson also holds the longest active streak of consecutive Sweet 16s with six, a distinction held by Few before Sampson’s Cougars downed Few’s Zags in the second round this March.
Houston has been an underrated college basketball superpower since Sampson took over the program that had just one NCAA Tournament appearance over the previous 22 seasons. It took Sampson three years to get the Cougars back to the Big Dance, but now he’s a back-to-back Big 12 champ, something that felt unthinkable for the program that had just joined the AAC from Conference USA in 2013.
There were big questions about how Houston would fare stepping up to the Big 12 in 2023, but Sampson has answered them emphatically with consecutive regular season titles and a conference tournament crown this year.
Three Final Fours won't be enough, Sampson will ultimately need a national championship to cement his legacy as one of the all-time greats in college basketball, but he’s far too overlooked as one of the best in the sport right now.