Cougars’ show of success earns award for Sampson

Kelvin Sampson, who led the University of Houston to its best regular season in a quarter-century, was named the American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year on Wednesday.

Sampson won the award, in a vote of the league’s coaches, after leading the Cougars to a 24-6 record, No. 21 national ranking and tie for second place in the conference.

Bigger things are to come for the Cougars, who are expected to advance to the NCAA Tournament for just the second time since 1992.

“This award means that our kids had success, and that’s good enough for me,” Sampson, 62, said.

Sampson becomes only the third UH men’s basketball coach to win a coach of the year award, joining Guy V. Lewis (1983 and 1984) and Pat Foster (1992) in the Southwest Conference.

For Sampson, the honor is his fourth in a different conference. He was a two-time winner in 1983 and 1985 in the Frontier Conference at Montana Tech and won Pac-10 and Big 8 Coach of the Year at Washington State and Oklahoma, respectively.

“I thought about my family,” Sampson said of his immediate thoughts upon learning he won the AAC award. “The journey that we’ve had. My wife and two kids, our personal journey. And then I thought about my mother and father. How proud they’d be. My mom and dad would be proud.”

The Cougars were picked to finish sixth in the preseason, but their 24 regular-season wins are the most for the program since the Phi Slama Jama team won 26 in 1983-84. UH knocked off two top-10 teams, Wichita State and Cincinnati, as part of a 15-0 home record at Texas Southern’s H&PE Arena. The ranking is also the highest for the school since finishing as the national runner-up in ’84.

The way UH has won has been in typical Sampson fashion, with defense and rebounding that rank among the nation’s best and a deep roster that twice set the AAC record for 3-pointers (18) in a game. Guard Rob Gray was named to the AAC first team for the second straight year, forward Fabian White Jr. was selected to the All-Rookie team and guard Armoni Brooks was tabbed the league’s Sixth Man of the Year.

After going 13-19 in his first season at UH, Sampson led the Cougars to 22 and 21 wins and a pair of National Invitation Tournament appearances the next two seasons.

“We achieved something this year that’s special, but we’ve got a lot of basketball left,” Sampson said.

Sampson also has been instrumental in a resurgence in the program with the opening of the $25 million Guy V. Lewis Development Facility in 2016 and the $60 million renovation of the Fertitta Center.

“We’re doing what I thought we could do if we had the administration’s support,” Sampson said. “Our administration has done a great job of putting us in a position to be successful.”

Sampson receives a $10,000 bonus for winning the award as part of the incentive package in his contract.

When the 68-team field is announced Sunday, Sampson will become one of 14 coaches to take four schools (Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and Houston) to the NCAA Tournament.