Houston coach Sampson receives award
There was a moment during the NCAA Tournament, when top-seeded Houston was well on its way to a 40-point rout of No. 16 seed Longwood, that helps to capture why the Cougars have become so dominant under Kelvin Sampson.
It was late in the game, and Mylik Wilson was late closing out on the Lancers’ DA Houston, who buried a 3-pointer over him.
“They were up 30,” Longwood coach Griff Aldrich recalled, “and I thought DA barely got the shot off. And Sampson’s screaming at Wilson like that’s an emergency. ‘Get out there!’ It’s like, damn. I thought he was out there.”
That’s the way Sampson coaches, demanding excellence no matter the score or time left in the game.
The results speak for themselves: Houston won the Big 12 regular-season title i n its first year in the league, earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament for the second straight year and advanced through the opening weekend for the fifth time in a row.
The superlative season, which ended with a Sweet 16 loss to Duke during which All-American guard Jamal Shead hurt his ankle, allowed Sampson to narrowly edge UConn’s Dan Hurley for his second Associated Press Coach of the Year award, which was announced Friday.
Sampson received 23 of 62 votes from the national panel that votes for the weekly AP Top 25; balloting closed before the start of the NCAA Tournament. Hurley, whose top-seeded Huskies will play Alabama in the Final Four on Saturday night as they chase a second consecutive national title, finished second with 21 votes.
“He coaches 40 minutes of a 40-minute game. I think that’s what makes us good,” Shead said of Sampson, who also earned AP coach of the year in 1995 with Oklahoma. “He holds us to the same standard, day-in, day-out, practice or game.”
Lamont Paris of South Carolina received eight votes to finish third. T.J. Otzelberger of Iowa State and Danny Sprinkle, who was recently hired away from Utah State by Washington, had four apiece. McNeese State’s Will Wade and Kyle Smith, who coached Washington State to the second round of the NCAA tourney before leaving for Stanford, each received a vote.