Nationally relevant again, a title will be the next step
Will the University of Houston win a national championship during the Kelvin Sampson era?
To be determined. Check back later. We’ll see.
I’m currently leaning toward no. But that’s just because the next NCAA championship will be the first in program history, college basketball changes so much annually nowadays and the 65-year-old Sampson already has a head coach in waiting on his staff, with his son Kellen Sampson.
It’s an interesting ques
tion. A relevant debate, considering everything that UH has financially and physically pumped into its completely revived basketball program in recent years.
But it also misses the real point.
This program is relevant again. Locally and nationally. And as long as Sampson’s Cougars keep being this consistent year after year, they’ll keep receiving top-tier NCAA Tournament invites and spending at least a couple weeks a year taking over this pro sports city during the annual thrill that is March Madness.
Consistency is the real key for the Coogs. It’s what was missing from the mid-1990s until Sampson began turning everything around in 2017-18. Since then, UH has earned three consecutive NCAA Tournament berths and spent the
last four campaigns locked into the weekly Top 25 poll.
“We needed to get further,” said Sampson, discussing the evolution of a program that produced a 13-19 team in his first year. “This potentially could have been the third straight year of a Sweet 16. If the kid doesn’t hit that great shot that he made, fortunate shot against Michigan, that could have been a Sweet 16. The next year against Kentucky, a Sweet 16. And then this year a Sweet 16.
“We’re getting the next step. Once we got to the Elite Eight, that’s where you want your program to be. You want it to improve, to get better. I know how difficult it is to get to a Final Four.”
It’s been a brilliant, fascinating tournament. Heck, it’s been so good that some were insisting that Jalen Suggs’ overtime longrange 3-pointer, which heroically allowed No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga to
knock off No. 11 UCLA on Saturday night, passed up Christian Laettner’s lastsecond turnaround jumper in 1992 to instantly become the biggest shot in tournament history.
Are our memories so chaotic and convoluted in 2021 that we can’t remember truly amazing things that happened just five years ago?
The best and biggest shot in NCAA Tournament history belongs to Villanova’s Kris Jenkins, who drilled a buzzer-beating 3 against North Carolina inside a delirious NRG Stadium to win the whole darn thing in 2016.
The Final Four is bigger than the Elite Eight. The NCAA title game is bigger and more important than the Final Four. It’s simple math, really.
Jenkins, Suggs and Laettner, in that order.
Anyway, back to the Coogs.
Yes, Baylor was significantly better on Saturday.
Basically on a whole-different-level better.
But look at what Scott Drew has built with the Bears, and what Mark Few has created at Gonzaga, and you’ll find a promising connection with Sampson’s Coogs.
Baylor’s program was in shambles at the start of a new millennium.
Drew went 8-21, 9-19 and 4-13 during his initial three seasons. In 2021, that gets you fired.
But in 2008, the NCAA Tournament started becoming a near-annual event for the Bears. First round, second round, regional semifinal.
How did Baylor — Baylor?! — become this strong and powerful? Easily pushing away Sampson’s best and deepest Coogs squad 78-59, then matching up with still undefeated Gonzaga on Monday night in Indianapolis for the national title.
Drew created a foundation, then kept building.
Since 2008, the Bears have danced in the madness nine times.
That consistency now has Baylor 40 minutes away from winning it all.
Few has built a national powerhouse in Spokane, Wash. Since 2000, the Bulldogs have lived in the NCAA Tournament, overpowering the West Coast Conference and surpassing bluebloods including Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas.
“It’s about player development and team chemistry. Those are the bedrocks of Gonzaga basketball,” Few said in March 2015, when Gonzaga went 35-3 and fell in the Elite Eight. “That stayed true through this entire run. But at the same time, we’ve been able to add great talent and great players. You don’t consistently get to this tournament and win games in this tournament if you don’t have great players.”
If it can happen in Waco, it can obviously happen in Houston.
If it can happen in Spokane, it surely can be built and sustained in America’s fourth-largest city.
The next step for UH isn’t winning a national championship. The next step is turning the Coogs into an annual March Madness threat.
Win that battle and 37 years won’t separate UH’s next Final Four from its latest one.
Prized recruits and transfers will choose the Cougars over other options. Fans will keep buying in, filling Fertitta Center and giving Sampson’s crew one of the premier homecourt advantages in the country.
If the NCAA Tournament has to keep handing top seeds to UH every year, a national championship should one day follow.