With Kelvin Sampson pushing them into the elite, Houston finally can live in the present | Opinion
SAN ANTONIO — It would be impossible to say that the Final Four banners hanging in dingy Hofheinz Pavilion were still aspirational by the time Kelvin Sampson arrived in 2014. If anything, they were a crutch for the failures of administration after administration and coach after coach, an excuse to keep the status quo even as it had been gathering dust for decades.
The specter of Phi Slama Jama and how the iconic program of Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler was in the 1980s had long since expired, even though the arena they played in looked exactly the same for the next 30 years. If anything, the glory days were an anchor for the Cougars because talking about them masked how far behind they had fallen in the modern era. Houston wasn’t really a program, it was college basketball nostalgia.
“Before I came, they fired a coach every four years — 16 years, four coaches,” Sampson said. “But facilities didn't change. So whose fault is that? You keep firing coaches, but you haven't done anything to help them. It's like nobody cared, nobody believed. That's what disappointed me the most.”
Sampson is making this point again on Friday because it underscores how satisfying, and how remarkable, it is for him to be on the verge of taking Houston to a second straight Final Four. And at this moment, the Cougars — seeded No. 5 in the South Regional — are the team that has the best chance of winning the national title, according to the betting markets and analytics.
“We're not Villanova,” Sampson said, referring to Houston’s Elite Eight opponent Saturday. “Villanova's up here. We're down here. We're not there. Maybe one day we can be, but we're not there yet, and that's OK. You have to be comfortable in your own skin. There's not a lot of Villanovas. A lot of programs have gone down and gone back up, but not Villanova. They're great every year.”
You can understand why Sampson was working so hard to cast Saturday’s game as a clash between a well-heeled blueblood from the ritzy Philadelphia suburbs and the city school program still looking up at the elite. For the first time in this tournament, and perhaps in Sampson’s entire tenure, Houston isn’t the fun upstart anymore. After dismantling No. 1 seed Arizona on Thursday, the Cougars are expected to win.
“We've had to overcome a lot in those first few years, whereas a school like Villanova can't relate to that,” Sampson said. “They've always been Villanova.”
Jay Wright might have a slightly different view. Though Villanova had never fallen into complete disrepair the way Houston did, it was no one’s idea of a blueblood when Wright took over in 2001 as a relatively unproven 39-year-old who had taken Hofstra to the NCAA Tournament a couple times.
Much like Houston, Villanova’s 1980s glory mostly faded away. Between Rollie Massimino’s last great run in 1988 and Wright’s first Sweet 16 appearance, 2005, 17 years had passed. Then came a decade of breakthroughs, followed by expectations that were sometimes unmet. It took until Wright’s 15th season at Villanova, when they won his first of two national championships, that the narrative began to shift and the Wildcats became college basketball’s consummate winners.
“When you come to a place like Villanova, you do benefit from great tradition there are a lot of foundations set in place, a history, a pride,” Wright said. “But there can be interruptions sometimes. We even had it during our tenure a little bit and you can have one down year and people want to go back to the glory days. I have great respect for the difficulty when you’re at a program like Houston when they had a great history, there’s a lot of pressure on you as a coach to get it back there. They just remember the good times, but they don’t remember how hard it was to get to those good times.”
But the trajectory of both Villanova and Houston over the last decade shows just how much things can change when you let go of the 1980s and start looking at the future. As Sampson pointed out, it’s only the older reporters — not recruits — who keep talking about Phi Slama Jama. The players he wants to play for him next season and beyond care more about Quentin Grimes.
“We sell our program,” Sampson said. “This era.”
And this era is shaping up to be a great one for Houston — maybe even better than the 1980s run — with its sparkling new facilities and membership in the Big 12 that will begin in the next couple years.
Yet this still feels very authentic, a program overhaul that is both remarkable in its magnitude and true to its blue-collar roots. Just as one example, Sampson said that no Houston players who will be on the floor Saturday have gotten name, image and likeness deals. Even now, he’s still having to hustle to get Houston fans into arenas and to do basic things like pep rallies before big games.
But something historic is brewing. And if Houston makes a second straight Final Four, it won’t be about the past but rather how Sampson got everyone around the school to buy into the present.
“I appreciate that our fans appreciate our program now,” he said. “We had to work at that. Schools like Villanova, you can't relate to that because you haven't been down to these depths, and to see where it is now and to see the look on our kids' faces.
“When you get old like me, everything you do is for the players. It's their program. It's the players' program. Fabian White, the winningest player in the history of our school. He's not from another era. He's from this era, these kids right now, the now, today, 2022. Be proud of that. Don't live in another era. I felt like I've had to constantly educate that, that we are good. We have a really good basketball program. Are we iconic? Of course not. Are we great? Long way away. But we're working hard to get better.”
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken