Kelvin Sampson, The Strategist — The Screaming Caricature Of Houston’s Coach Misses How Much His Adjustments Swing Things For the Big 12 Champs

J‘Wan Roberts dribbles the ball in the high post, delivering a perfect bounce pass to a cutting Terrance Arceneaux who whips the ball inside to JoJo Tugler for a wide open dunk. This is how the University of Houston team opened one of its 18 Big 12 wins, with a little bit of Kelvin Sampson magic. That’s a set play with the power forward hitting the swing guard who finds the man playing center.

How many times in college basketball are teams doing that? Kelvin Sampson is heralded for a lot of things, but his play calling and strategic adjustments usually aren’t among them. The caricature of Houston’s head man is that he’s the defensive madman, the old school coach who gets his guys to play harder than almost any other basketball team in America. It’s an image that largely serves Sampson and his UH program well, but it only begins to tell the story.

Kelvin Sampson is more than the beyond intense guy screaming on the sideline. He’s one of the best tactical minds in the game, someone whose in-game adjustments have saved this 26-4 UH team a number of times this season. Without Sampson’s situational moves and sometimes uncanny feel for his own team, there is no way this Houston squad breaking in a new point guard rips through the Big 12 with a 18-1 record, winning the power league by such a wide margin that Saturday night’s regular season finale at Baylor is the second straight game that will mean absolutely nothing in the standings.

“He’s the least stubborn stubborn person I’ve ever met,” UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson tells PaperCity. “What I mean is that we’ve got certain non-negotiables and anything and everything else is up for modification. And he’s so good at watching and reading the course of the game and figuring out what lane we need to be in. He’s so good at not only figuring out what lane we need to be in, but how do we modify and tweak what we do in our system to fit what the game is calling for.

“And he sees it in real time better and faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. His ability to find the right lane for us is nuts. It’s a gift.”

Kelvin Sampson’s made dramatic adjustments in game after game this season, including how his team attacked Kansas in that double overtime win at Allen Fieldhouse, one of UH’s signature victories of the season. Sampson tweaked the offensive sets so point guard Milos Uzan got the ball in the middle of the floor, opening up lanes for him to either get into the paint to either pull up and pass or flick up one of his increasingly effective floaters. Houston would go on to score 44 points in the last 17:31 of the game, a pace Bill Self’s team could not keep up with.

“He sees it in real time better and faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. His ability to find the right lane for us is nuts. It’s a gift.” — UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson

In two wins over West Virginia, Sampson went to a defense that UH had practiced but never used in a game before the first matchup to confound Mountaineers star Javon Small. The Big 12’s second leading scorer put up a combined 21 points in 75 minutes against Houston. In No. 3 Houston’s showdown with No. 10 Iowa State, with T.J. Otzelberger’s Cyclones trapping on the sidelines and the baselines to grind UH’s offense to a halt, Sampson had his Cougars clear out to let guard LJ Cryer go one-on-one. Cryer finished with 28 points and Houston won by nine with UH’s basketball lifer of a coach secure enough to know that sometimes the best offense is scrapping those intricately planned sets and letting your most natural scorer play what some might derisively dismiss as Hero Ball.

“You have one of the best coaches in the game at the height of his powers,” ESPN Big Monday analyst Fran Fraschilla tells PaperCity when asked about Sampson’s in-game adjustments. “Tommy Lloyd and Arizona had a great game plan for Houston, they really did. But Kelvin and his staff figured out counters for it and it helped flip the game in the second half.”

Kelvin Sampson self scouts his own team obsessively first and foremost (watching more video of his own players than anyone), but he also gears things around the opponent.

In UH’s a 69-59 win at Colorado, that meant opening the game with several specific sets Sampson thought would work against the Buffaloes’ defense. The result? UH jumped out to 9-0 lead in a game it’d end up winning by 10 points. That’s how you keep the possibility of an upset at bay on a February Dog Days Saturday when college basketball gets racked by them.

“He gives us the best chance in every game,” UH starting guard Emanuel Sharp says of Sampson. “He’s always thinking of something.”

“He’s always teaching. And he uses video probably better than any coach to do that.” — UH assistant coach K.C. Beard

Kelvin Sampson, Video Maven

The men who coach with him marvel how quickly Kelvin Sampson picks up things. Old school? Houston’s 69-year-old coach is fanatical about teaching his players with the latest in video technology. UH assistant K.C. Beard first worked with Sampson as the video coordinator for the Canadian National Team that Sampson helped coach in 2013. Sampson quickly decided he needed that type of video program at Houston and made Beard one of his first hires after taking over UH’s left-for-dead basketball program 11 years ago.

As obsessed as The Brutalist director Brady Corbet is with filming in VistaVision is how fixated Kelvin Sampson remains on having easily digestible video clips to show his players.

“The one thing that Coach is is the consummate teacher,” Beard says. “I noticed that when I was with him in the NBA, with Team Canada. He’s always teaching. And he uses video probably better than any coach to do that.

“We watch a lot of video. And he helps our guys understand what they’ve got to do, what adjustments, what that looks like through video.”

To Kelvin Sampson, much of this is just coaching ball. Just listening to the game.

“If you listen to the game,” Sampson says. “It will usually tell you what you should do.”

Sampson himself largely dismisses any talk of grand strategic adjustments or forward thinking. You get the idea that Sampson thinks everyone should be able to see the game like he does, that it’s all much simpler than the talking heads make it out to be. Of course, the coaches who are around Kelvin Sampson every day will tell you that the man who’s won at Montana Tech, Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and Houston across 36 college seasons notices and picks up on things quickly that others completely miss. And then formulates answers for those problems on the fly.

“Coach is a Hall of Famer,” UH associate head coach Quannas White tells PaperCity. “You can’t just say he’s really good at motivating guys or he’s really good at teaching defense. He’s one of the smartest, high IQ coaches on any level that I’ve ever been around. He’s the best, man.

“People talk about certain coaches being the greatest of all time. . .  He should be in that conversation.”

Kelvin Sampson, The Strategist. It may not fit the easy caricature for Houston’s coach, but it’s on display every game. Just look.