San Antonio – Before Duke’s coach Jon Scheyer trained in his first official match after taking over for Mike Krzyzewski, he stole his team in Houston to play in a secret pre -season scrum.
Scheyer intentionally wanted Kelvin Sampson and the cougars for his first career “Game”.
“I wanted the most difficult test for our team,” Scheyer told 37, 32 years younger than Sampson. “I thought Houston would be the most difficult test. They are the most difficult test because of their coach. Their coach is as good as in the university basketball period. I admired from afar how they defended.”
Thus, on October 29, 2022 when the football cougars beat the USF at the Tdecu stadium through the campus, the two spoke for 45 minutes before the fray. Duke may have lost. It doesn’t matter. Sampson saw something special.
“I’m going to tell you how much he did,” Sampson said about Scheyer. “No one never talks about coach K.”
Little comes from these scrums a) because they are Secret and b) Overall, they don’t mean much. But 2 and a half years later, the images cannot fade.
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“I think we were struck in the face several times that day. We hit, however,” Scheyer.
“Hell yeah, I do it (remember),” said Duke Tyrese Proctor goalkeeper. “It was physical like hell. I was struck a few times. It was just a different type of game. It’s just the way they play, they try to hurt it.”
“He was shaken,” said Houston assistant Kellen Sampson about Proctor. “The game seemed very fast for him, but he was talented.”
The melee has become an inspiration for Kellen who will soon take over for his father, Kelvin, as a chief coach of the cougars when the elder Sampson, 69, will retire.
“He had a presence about him,” said Kellen about Scheyer. “There was an easy way to communicate.”
“Jon was so sure and courageous to build Duke through her eyes. He didn’t have the impression that he just needed to continue what coach K was doing. He got out of the program. He changed their presence on social networks. Offensively, they do nothing the coach K did. He was willing to train Duke as Jon Scheyer sees Duke.
The teams played a much more important match than this scrum last year in the victory of Sweet 16. Duke 54-51 against the cougars propelled it to its 17th Final Four. This national semi-final n ° 18. Only North Carolina (21 years old) has more.
What all this means on Saturday evening when Duke and Houston meet again in the Final Four are unknown.
The Revenge match marks more than the same for Duke. For Houston, this is a reminder of the time it took to light the lights. They have not fallen for some time.
“We are not only a combat partner for Muhammad Ali,” said Kellen Sampson, remembering this melee. “We are preparing for our own truck fights.”
But it was not always so for Houston. The program was in poor condition when Sampson arrived in 2014 because any member of the Sampson family can tell you.
Houston had problems before the arrival of Sampson
While she was wading in confetti, grandchildren and hugs on Lucas Oil Stadium soil on Sunday in the Midwest regional final, Karen Sampson, the wife of Kelvin Sampson 45, could not believe how far her, her husband and Houston basketball had come.
Coming to the University of Houston in 2014 was not close to a Slam Dunk for the Sampson family. Forget the metaphor of basketball, it was actually a career risk. The cougars had not felt the NCAA tournament for 22 years.
What you see this week in this city is a brilliant and brilliant seed for the third consecutive year representing the fourth city in the country. These couguars were polished with the sparkle. But well before going to San Antonio this week, there were questions about the Sampson family taking the work of Houston.
First of all, there were rats in what was then known as Pavillion Hofheinz. The homeless too.
“There was a disproportionate quantity of rats – and rodents and birds,” said Lauren Sampson, director of Houston basketball operations. “They never locked anything.”
“They killed the vineyard,” said Karen, the wife of Kelvin Sampson 45 years old. “The vineyard was Phi Slama Jama, what it was. All of a sudden, they didn’t watered it.”
Not all of a sudden. The negligence of Houston basketball of these days of glory was long and deep. When Kelvin Sampson took the job 11 years ago, it was not only a question of revitalizing a list or lighting a city. At first, it was just a question of lighting the lights.
“I turned off the lights for a photo shoot and it took three months for the lights to come back,” said Lauren. “We have changed everything.”
This understood to tear it away from asbestos – a danger to health – which prevented these lights from changing the longest. This included the creation of the momentum to change the Hofheinz pavilion decrepit in Le Center Fertitta scintillant and modern. In other words, change the culture a piece of wall at a time.
If you get the atmosphere that Houston’s resurrection was a family affair, you are right. Karen holds in her an oral history of everything related to Sampson. Lauren is the woman in her father’s arm.
“I knew it was going to be a major restoration project. It was just worse than I imagined it once we got there,” said Kelvin about Houston. “I did it with my daughter and did it with my son.”
Kelvin was not going to take the job unless Lauren and Kellen were included. They knew enough about it to tell everyone to depart.
“We always had programs that we built, Montana Tech, Washington State,” said Lauren, remembering her father’s previous stops. “Oklahoma was our big thing. In Oklahoma, you had to recruit the fans base each year. There was no postponement. This last match with which you ended up, it was not your crowd of the first game.”
All these places have changed because of the Sampson effect. In four years in Montana Tech, a NAIA school, he improved the 13 -game eggs record for the first season in the second and won at least a share of two conference titles. As Sampson left Washington’s state in 1994, the cougars had made the NCAA tournament. They have only returned three times since.
Oklahoma never managed to succeed until Sampson was there to guide the Sooners around 11 tournaments in 12 seasons.
Houston’s success a family affair
April 2, 2014 – The date of hiring of Sampson – was a strange period in everyone’s life. Kelvin had just finished his sixth year as an assistant in the NBA. Lauren, who sold sponsorship for her father’s program at Indiana, left the profession after the coach’s second series Major NCAA violations.
“I had my heart broken after Indiana,” she said.
Some time later, Lauren was in Charlotte, in North Carolina, interviewing for a job in Espnu. While walking in the offices, a familiar view drew its attention.
“They had my father’s face on a dartboard and threw darts,” she said. “I just looked at and said:” I need to get out of sport. He’s my father. “I left.
Based on her cosmetology license, Lauren went to work for a beauty salon. It was nice to be anonymous again. Between Jobs, Dad had time to make a haircut.
“Half people in this beauty salon, you can get credit hours for the beauty school when you are in prison,” recalls Lauren. “Half of the people I got out of the beauty school came out of prison.
“Everyone looked at him and they said to themselves:” You look so familiar. Is he a probation agent? “I went:” Yes! “”
Getty images
When the samples arrived in Houston, the level of apathy on the campus was amazing. Lauren would print what she called “invitations” to distribute to students. Hofheinz’s address was included because she said, students did not know where the games were played.
She would go to walk the hall of the arena by distributing team posters. She would have them handed over to him. Speaking of team posters, the first version under Sampson presented the couguars in jerseys. The jerseys did not arrive in time for the team’s photo session according to athletics.
Lauren has tried to read the Law on Riots to existing staff.
“I fires them,” she recalls. “I went full to Sampson in our senior executives. I looked at them, I closed my book and I said:” This is what we are going to do because you killed this program. “”
This first season ended with a cloth tag by posting a 13-19 record. The cougars finished second to last the attendance of the American Athletic Conference. The group and the cheerlers only arose in the conference season.
“They would run right there and agitate,” recalls Lauren. “First of all, these first two years, who are you agitating?”
But Kelvin Sampson was a revitalizer. The work made sense because, well, it was available. Sampson had not had a head coach position for these six years when Houston opened. https://www.cbssports.com/college-ceketball/news/houston-coach-kelvin-sampson-is-winning-after-his-career-was-deraled-for-ncaa-violations-at-are-wow-welowed/
“I wanted to go to the worst situation I was able to find,” Kelvin said Thursday before the national semi-final on Saturday against Duke. “There was no expectation in Houston. It was terrible. The administration didn’t care. All they were good was coaches.”
The Sampson wave has swept the program like Houston’s summer humidity. Lauren holds a diploma in Oklahoma in communications with minors in Amerindian history and studies.
“But I really have a doctorate in university basketball,” she said.
After this first season, the cougars have never won less than 21 games. The Midwest regional victory over Tennessee was the 34th school record.
The Sampson family is in his third Final Four and a game to play for a national title.
