SAN ANTONIO — It took years for Kelvin Sampson to turn Houston into one of the NCAA’s top programs once again, built on defense, toughness and rebounding.
It wasn’t quite enough to secure the first national championship for Sampson and the Cougars, at least not this season. And Sampson, who has rehabilitated his image from his days as a pariah to an almost-lovable coaching lifer, could only watch as his team struggled to score in the agonizing final moments of Monday night’s 65-63 loss to Florida in the title game.
YOUR NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: THE FLORIDA GATORS 🏆🐊#MarchMadness @GatorsMBK pic.twitter.com/XatLv5x2hm
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) April 8, 2025
It ended with Houston unable to get up a shot, with Emanuel Sharp forced to let the ball bounce after jumping to take a 3-pointer and instead being forced to dribble while airborne to avoid a turnover thanks to a hard closeout by Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr.
That sent multiple players scurrying for the ball and diving on the floor to kill the rest of the clock. The horn sounded, and the 69-year-old Sampson stood on the sideline with his hands on his hips, motionless with a blank look on his face.
Moments later, as the confetti started to fall for the Gators, Sampson walked with his head down to the edge of the court as though trying to make sense of what had just happened. He descended the steps, then started making his way up the lane through the heaviest concentration of red-clad Houston fans in a painful march to the locker room after the Cougars squandered a 12-point lead in the second half.
It was nearly the highlight of a coaching career that includes stops at Washington State, Oklahoma — where he guided the Sooners to the 2002 Final Four — and Indiana. Ousted from IU due to an NCAA probe into Sampson making too many recruiting phone calls, he received a five-year show cause penalty in 2008 that kept him out of the college ranks until his return at Houston in 2014.
Sampson found refuge there after spending his exile in the NBA, while he offered the school the dream of reconnecting with its history tied to the famed Phi Slama Jama era in the 1980s — which before this year had marked the program’s lone trip to the NCAA title game — behind a coach with a proven record for winning.
By his third season, Sampson had the Cougars back in March Madness. They won 33 games in his fourth, then two years later had the Cougars back in the Final Four in 2021 — the program’s first since Hakeem Olajuwon and coach Guy Lewis led them to the 1984 title game before falling to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown.
The Indianapolis bubble run of four years ago eliminated any lingering doubt about Houston’s full arrival as a national power, all rooted in Sampson’s vision. It started with defense and rebounding, length and physicality, built in Sampson’s image with an unyielding fight and work ethic going back to his upbringing in eastern North Carolina.
His team had put that on display all season, most recently with an improbable comeback in the final minute to stun Duke in Saturday’s national semifinals. Then came Monday night’s finale, leading just about the entire way and keeping Clayton under control after the Gators star had torn through March Madness.
The Cougars just couldn’t finish it out on a night when they shot just 34.8%, including 6 of 25 from 3-point range, putting too much weight on the defense to carry them home.
And in the end, Sampson couldn’t find the answer.
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