When the University of Houston introduced Kelvin Sampson as head coach almost 11 years ago, the well -decided basketball veteran entered one of the sport’s longest shadows. When the calendar 2025 turns to Mars, Sampons Cougars sets a new standard for a program that is far synonymous exclusively with the late, big guy Lewis.
Houston closes its 2024-25 regular seasonal slate with games against Cincinnati on Saturday and two of the last three programs to win the national championship, Kansas and Baylor. However, Cougars have already sealed not worse than part of the BIG 12 Conference Championship.
Houston enters this route and the BIG 12 tournament playing for its third straight No. 1 seed and an inner track to its second final Four look for five seasons. Not since the Hall of Famer Guy Lewis trained Cougars to three straight Final Fours from 1982 to 1984 has Houston had such a success.
In fact, in no time since Lewis retired in 1986, Houston has reached the heights that quickly become routine for Cougars during Sampson. From 1961, when the first Lewis-trained Houston team reached the NCAA tournament, until the Hakeem Olajuwon-led national runner-up cougars team in 1984, the program played in 14 editions of Big Dance.
During the three decades between Lewis’s pension and Sampson’s rent in 2014, only four Houston team reached NCAA tournament -one fewer than the total four future program made during Lewis.
Yesheryar’s power plants regularly disappear from glory in college basketball and spend generations chasing past success in futility. When Sampson came to Houston 2014, the program was such an example and shared properties with teams like Depaul and UNLV: Once dominant juggernauts in cities that produce recruits on top flight, but which choose to go elsewhere.
Holding state prospects has been a pillar in Sampson’s resurrection of Houston Basket. His first NCAA tournament team at UH 2017-18 contained key players such as Armoni Brooks of Round Rock and Fabian White from Atascocita, which grew into a prominent of the 2022 Elite Eight team.
This year, Houston has forward J’wan Roberts, a graduation from Shoemaker High School in the guy and Lj Cryer from Katy. As a twice All-Big 12-Election on the way to a third, Baylor Transfer Cryer is the Facto star of 2024-25 Cougars.
But if there is a different quality of Sampson’s service in Houston, which best explains the program’s return to Lewis-era levels of appearance, it is that Cougars do not trust stars.
Make no mistakes; Cryer is a fantastic player. He shoots almost 42 percent from the 3-point interval and will end a third season in average near 15 points per match.
But other teams like Jockey for No. 1 seeds together with Houston include Auburn with Johni Broome, a state-sheets stuffing large man on average one double double per match. Broome is a throw to a time when dominant centers owned the college basketball as the mid-1980s when Olajuwon and Houston met Patrick Ewing and Georgetown for the national championship.
Broome’s latest 31-point, 14-rebound effort against Georgia, unlike any state line that a cougar is likely to produce. Cryer went for 28 points in an important victory over Iowa State, but only five next time against Texas Tech.
However, the results of these two matches were the same: Houston -Vinner who secured cougars’ efforts to the Big 12 Championship.
And then there is second no. 1 seed trainer Duke, built around the explosive game probably No. 1 NBA draft to Pick Cooper flag. Freshman phenomenon compares with Lewis-Era Houston bars because his NBA preparedness is clear in college.
In fact, Lewi’s best Houston team was built around players such as Elvin Hayes, Clyde Drexler and Olajuwon -College stars who continued to PRO greatness.
It is rare for college teams to compete for championships without NBA talent, and Sampson has and continues to attract future professionals to their program. His team differs from Lewis’s last four troops in that this era of NBA-bound cougars is not the individually dominant presence from the past.
And in that contrast lies another trait that explains Sampson’s success with a program that seemed to be intended to long for the days that have passed. Sampson has unlocked Houston potential to return to his previous peak not by emulating what defined the program earlier, but by embracing its own philosophy.
No one will confuse the aggressive, defensive -oriented style of today’s cougars with Phi Slamma Jamma, but it is Houston’s hard nosed approach that makes it successful. Set up a UH game, so you are guaranteed to see maximum effort from all five players on the track for all 40 minutes.
It is a move that made Sampson-coached team winners elsewhere, from a historically down-and-down program like Washington to his service at Oklahoma, which produced a Final Four run. This is also the identity that can raise Houston to a milestone that not even the big guy Lewis reached: a national championship.
