SAN ANTONIO – After Duke coach John Schayer took over Mike Krutzizewski, he flew his team to Houston to play in a secret preseason scrimmage before coaching in his first official game.
Shayer intentionally searched for Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars for his first career “game.”
“We wanted the toughest test for our team,” said Scheyer, 37, who is 32 years younger than Sampson. “We believed Houston would be the toughest test. They are the toughest test for coaches. Their coaches are as good as they were in college basketball.
So, on October 29, 2022, when the Soccer Cougars were beating USF at TDECU Stadiums across campus, the two spoke 45 minutes before the scrimmage. Duke might have lost. it doesn’t matter. Sampson saw something special.
“Please tell me how good he did,” Sampson said of Shayer. “No one talks about Coach K anymore.”
There’s not much from those scrimmages a) they’re secrets, and b) in the big picture, they don’t make much sense. However, after 2 and a half years, the image does not disappear.
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“I think we punched our faces many times that day, but we punched,” Shayer said.
“Hell, I’ll do that [remember]”Dukeguard Tyree Sproctor said, “It was physical like hell. I knocked my ass a few times. It was just a different type of game. It’s the way they play and they try to junk it.”
“He was rattling,” Houston assistant Kellen Sampson said of Proctor. “The game seemed very fast for him, but he was talented.”
The scrimmage has inspired Kellen, who will one day take over his father Kelvin as the head coach of the 69-year-old Sampson, who will be retiring from the Cougars.
“He was there about him,” Kellen said of Shayer. “There was an easy way for him to communicate. I remember him feeling like a head coach and thinking, ‘He’s going to be fine.’ “
“John was safe and brave enough to build a Duke through his eyes. He didn’t feel like he needed to continue what Coach K was doing. He went outside the program. He changed the presence of social media. Offensively, the coach did nothing.
The team played a much more important game, which was that scrimmage at Sweet 16 last year. Duke’s 54-51 victory over the Cougars pushed it into the 17th Final Four. This national semi-final is No. 18. Only North Carolina (21) has more.
This means that it is unknown on the Saturday night when Duke and Houston met again in the Final Four.
The rematch shows the same for Duke. For Houston, it reminds me of how long it took to turn on the lights. They haven’t been dimmed for a while.
“We are not Muhammad Ali’s sparring partner,” Keren Sampson said. “We’re preparing for our own heavyweight fight.”
But that wasn’t always the case for Houston. The program was in bad condition when Sampson arrived in 2014, as members of the Sampson family can tell you.
There was a problem in Houston before Sampson arrived.
Karen Sampson, the wife of 45-year-old Kelvin Sampson, couldn’t believe how far she, her husband and Houston basketball came in during the Midwest Regional Finals, embraced on the Lucas Oil Stadium floor on Sunday, when she walked the bills and hugged her grandson.
Coming to the University of Houston in 2014 was not nearly the Sampson family’s slam dunk. Forget the basketball ratio phors, this was actually a career risk. The Cougars have not smelled the NCAA Tournament for 22 years.
This week, the town is seen as the brightest and most bright seed for the third year in a row, representing the fourth largest city in the country. These cougars are troubled by their glow. But long before I arrived in San Antonio this week, I was asked about the Sampson family working in Houston.
First there was the rat, then known as Hofheinz Pavillion. Homeless people too.
“They’re making the most of their lives,” said Lauren Sampson, director of basketball operations at Houston. “They didn’t lock anything.”
“They killed the vineyard,” summed up Karen, wife of 45-year-old Kelvin Sampson. “The vineyard used to be a Fai Surama Jama. Suddenly, they didn’t put water in it.”
It’s not sudden. The neglect of Houston basketball from those glorious times was long and profound. When Kelvin Sampson got to work 11 years ago, it wasn’t just about revitalizing the roster or turning on the city. The first was to turn on the lights.
“We turned off the lights for a photo shoot and it took three months for the lights to come back,” Lauren said. “We’ve changed everything.”
To do this, we have made sure that these lights are not changed for a long time to tear off asbestos, a health hazard. That includes creating momentum to transform the aging Hofheins Pavilion into a sparkling modern Fertita centre. That is, you change the culture one part of the sheet wall at a time.
If you get the vibe that Houston’s revival is a family affair, you’re right. Karen holds all the oral history of Sampson within her. Lauren is the woman on her dad’s right hand.
“I knew it would be a major regeneration project, and when I got there it was far worse than I could have imagined,” Kelvin said of Houston. “I did it with my daughter and did it with my son.”
Kelvin had no intention of getting a job unless Lauren and Kellen were included. They knew enough blueprints to tell everyone not to get in the way.
“There was always a program that built Montana Tech in Washington,” Lauren said, recalling her father’s previous stop. “Oklahoma was a big thing for us. Oklahoma had to recruit a fan base every year. There were no carryovers. We ended with the last game.
All of these locations have been changed due to the Sampson effect. In his four years at Montana Tech at NAIA School, he improved the Orediggers record in 13 games from his first to second season, earning a share of at least two meeting titles. By the time Sampson left Washington State in 1994, the Cougars had a NCAA tournament. They have only returned three times since.
Oklahoma has never been more successful than when Sampson led the Sooners to 11 tournaments in 12 seasons.
Houston’s successful family events
April 2, 2014 – Sampson’s employment date – was a strange time in everyone’s lives. Kelvin had just finished his sixth year as an NBA assistant. Lauren, who sold his sponsorship for her father’s program in Indiana, left the profession following the coach’s second set of NCAA violations.
“I was heartbroken after Indiana,” she said.
A while later, Lauren was in Charlotte, North Carolina, interviewed for her job at ESPNU. As I walked through the office, the familiar sight caught my eye.
“They had my dad’s face on the dartboard and they were throwing darts at it,” she said. “I was just looking, ‘I need to get out of sports, that’s my dad.’ I was crying. ”
Leaning towards her beauty license, Lauren went to work for a beauty salon. It was good to be anonymous again. In between work, Dad had time to jump in for a haircut.
“Half of the people in this beauty salon get credit hours at beauty school when they’re in prison,” recalls Lauren. “Half of the people I came out of beauty school with came out of prison.
“Everyone looks at him and they say, ‘You look so familiar. Is he a probation officer?” “Yes!”
Kelvin Sampson’s wife, Karen and his grandson celebrated the title of Houston’s Midwest Region. Getty Images
When Sampson arrived in Houston, the level of indifference on campus was phenomenal. Lauren prints what is called an “invitation” to hand out to students. The address of Hofheinz was included. Because students didn’t know where the game was played.
She handed out team posters and went to walk along the arena concourse. She will bring them back to her. Speaking of team posters, Sampson’s first version featured the Cougars’ practice jersey. The jerseys did not arrive in time for the team’s photo shoot, according to Athletic.
Lauren tried to load the Riot Act into existing staff.
“I torched them,” she recalled. “I went to the senior staff to a full Sampson. I looked at them, closed the book and said, ‘This is what we’re trying to do because you killed this program.” “
That first season ended with the Rag Tag Bunch, posting 13-19 records. The Cougars were second in attendance at the American Athletic Conference. The band and cheerleaders didn’t show up until the conference season.
“They’ll just run away and wave,” Lauren recalls. “First of all, who have you waved to in the first few years?”
However, Kelvin Sampson was a revival agent. The work makes sense. Because it was available. Sampson had not worked as head coaching for the six years Houston opened. https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/houston-coach-kelvin-sampson-is-winning-his-career-was-derailed-for-ncaa-violations-
“I wanted to go to the worst situation I could find,” Kelvin said Thursday before Saturday’s national semi-final against Duke. “There were no expectations for Houston. It was terrible. The administration didn’t bother. All they were good at was firing coaches.”
Sampson’s waves wiped out the program like the humidity of Houston’s summer. Lauren holds an Oklahoma degree in communication with minors in history and Native American Studies.
“But really, I have a PhD in college basketball,” she said.
After that first season, the Cougars did not win games under 21 games. Tennessee’s Midwest Region victory came in 34th in the school record.
The Sampson Family is playing the game away from winning national titles in their third Final Four.
