Why Houston coach Kelvin Sampson's return to OU is 'not a normal game' for either side

Kelvin Sampson sat inside Houston’s basketball facilities Thursday in reflection.

This wasn’t an ordinary Zoom press conference. Sampson fielded questions about OU, his former team he coached for 12 seasons and even wiped away a tear.

Nearly 18 years since he left Norman, Sampson will return to the Lloyd Noble Center as the head coach of top-ranked Houston for a game for the first time since departing for the Indiana Hoosiers in 2006. It is sure to be an emotional rollercoaster for Sampson and OU fans.

Sampson owns the best winning percentage in OU men's basketball history, as he won 71.9% of the games he coached in the crimson and cream. Kelvin’s children — Kellen, who played and coached at OU, and Lauren — are on his Cougars staff along with former players Hollis Price and Quannas White, who started on Sampson’s 2002 Final Four team.

In ‘02, the Sooners advanced to the Big 12 Tournament championship game to face Roy Williams’ No. 1 Kansas, which was undefeated against conference opponents and averaged 93.6 points per game. Price dropped 23 points — including two clutch 3-pointers down the stretch — to give the Sooners a 64-55 victory and signal to the nation that Sampson’s team was hungry and not going to be an easy out in the big dance.

OU rode that momentum all the way to Atlanta for the Final Four, eventually falling to Indiana.

“It's still maybe the most impressive performance I remember,” said Mike Houck, who was OU men’s basketball’s sports information director from 1995-2015. “We knew we were good, but I think that game really cemented that notion in all of our players’ heads and really gave us some momentum going into the NCAA Tournament, which our guys capitalized on and obviously won four games there.”

Men’s basketball in Norman has struggled to return to the consistent highs of Sampson’s tenure, meanwhile Houston has advanced to the Sweet 16 or further in the past four NCAA tournaments held.

“It’s not a normal game,” said Sampson, wiping his face as emotions struck him Thursday and reminiscing on his days in Norman and late friends Toby Keith and Ryan Minor. “I'm not going to sit here and say that. This is a place that our family spent 12 years. A lot of dear friends, and a lot of dear friends that have passed away too. Actually, that's kind of what I thought of at first.

"One thing I've noticed about getting old is you cry more.”

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Kelvin, 68, isn’t the only Sampson who will be emotional on Saturday. Kellen, the Cougars’ assistant coach, was raised in Norman, still relentlessly roots for the OU football team and has best friends who still live in the area. While he won’t have the chance to devour some Classic 50s or Tarahumara’s — his favorite Norman restaurants — when he’s in town, he’s looking forward to walking through the tunnel where he once played after school as a child.

“(It’s) surreal,” Kellen told The Oklahoman. “I think it'll just be odd, just 15 years of sitting on that bench and living in that community. I didn't just go to Oklahoma, man, we lived in Norman. We were Normanites, we referenced Norman as Nompton. We were from Norman and then we went to Oklahoma. Every time I’m back in Norman, there's an immediate familiarity and comfort that comes over you. I know where I'm at, I know where to go.

“I don't need a GPS and so coming in as a visitor will certainly be surreal.”

Not only are there OU alums sprinkled throughout Sampson’s staff, the energy his Sooners teams played with are mimicked at Houston.

Alex Brown, the longtime OU basketball athletic trainer who spent every season with Kelvin in Norman, remembers how fierce Sampson’s practices were. The Sooners wore shorts with the word “intensity” written on them, which is how Sampson coached and how his teams played.

“Kelvin is doing at Houston the same things he did at Oklahoma,” Brown said. “He builds a team that ultimately will run through a brick wall for him and that’s what he’s really good at doing in March. He may take a few bumps in January and February, come March they’re hard to beat.

“Really hard to beat.”

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‘Validated in Oklahoma’

Kelvin’s decision to leave Norman to become the head coach at Indiana wasn’t one he took lightly.

OU showed no signs of slowing down and made the NCAA Tournament in 11 of his 12 seasons.

“It was just an excruciating decision for Coach,” Kellen said. “I remember it. There was nothing easy about it and he tossed and turned about what he should do.”

Kelvin later noted he loved his job coaching the Sooners and would’ve only left for a school like Indiana.

After leading the Hoosiers to March Madness in his first season on the job, Kelvin was forced to resign due to alleged NCAA recruiting violations at both Indiana and Oklahoma. The NCAA barred Sampson from calling recruits and making off-campus visits for a year, ruling he and his staff at OU made 577 extra phone calls to recruits.

The Sooners self-imposed sanctions, which included cutting scholarships.

Even with all that transpired during and after Kelvin’s time coaching the Sooners, the devoted fan base and the athletic department has maintained a deep respect for him. The 2002 Final Four team was honored to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the historic run, which Kelvin returned for.

Houck expects an overwhelmingly positive reception Saturday night when Kelvin walks onto the baseline he once paced for 12 years.

“I think they’ll be received extremely warmly and they should be,” Houck said. “They did so much for OU men’s basketball and that’s an era that should be celebrated, so I think fans will give him a very warm welcome at least pregame and then who knows from there.”

When his dad left for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at a basketball blueblood, Kellen decided to stay in his hometown that meant so much to him.

“There's a reason I stayed,” Kellen said. “I didn't follow him immediately to Indiana. It meant something to me to make sure that my degree was from the University of Oklahoma. It meant something to me to play my senior year at Oklahoma.

“That program means a heck of a lot to me and the state and the community, it will always mean a lot. I pull like hell for them, Lord knows I do, in every game but two and this just happens to be one of the two that I’ve got to put that part of me to the side.”

Kellen spent the 2007-08 season on Kelvin’s staff at Indiana, but returned to coach under Jeff Capel at OU after his father resigned in Bloomington. Kellen, Lauren, Price and White still drive their Houston players crazy on Saturdays talking about Sooners football.

And while Kellen admits Norman has gone a little “corporate” on him with most of his staple restaurants no longer in existence, he still tells everybody the world’s greatest restaurant is Charleston’s. To this day, one of best friends is Zac Selmon, son of OU football legend Dewey Selmon, and current Mississippi State athletic director.

Norman is the Sampsons’ home and they’ve brought some of that home to Houston.

Kelvin’s go-to tagline during his OU days was “heart, hustle and hardwood.” The aggressive defense and rebounding skills Houston plays with was born from Kelvin’s days coaching the Sooners.

Kellen says his father is 10 times the coach now compared to when he was in Norman, mostly due to the experiences and lessons he learned while at OU.

“(Everything we’re doing) was all validated in Oklahoma,” Kellen said. “There's a reason our staff is dotted with like six Oklahoma alums. … The roots of what we have done here started at Oklahoma.

“He's better (now) and that doesn't take anything away from what he was then. The magic of him is that he has found ways to continually improve every year, which is why he's a Hall of Famer. He's never satisfied and he's never settled for just being pretty good, he has continued to climb the ladder into greatness. But everything we do here … started in Norman.”

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Kelvin Sampson ‘will have an emotion’

OU hasn’t seen the same success since the Sampson’s left.

The Sooners excelled in the tournament under Capel and even appeared in the Final Four under Lon Kruger, but the program has missed the consistent contender status that was felt under Kelvin. Head coach Porter Moser has yet to take OU to the tournament, though it appears primed to make it this March in his third season.

College athletics has undergone major changes since Kelvin coached in Norman and it’s growing harder to retain and recruit players by the year. Moser led Loyola-Chicago to the Final Four in 2018 and has the respect of many coaches nationally, including Kelvin.

"I've known Porter for a long time,” Kelvin said Thursday. “Oklahoma's so lucky to have him as their head coach. He's one of the best coaches in the country and it should be a good game.”

On Feb. 17, Billy Tubbs became the first Sooners men’s basketball coach to be memorialized in the rafters of Lloyd Noble. Many wonder if Kelvin’s day will come soon.

Kelvin will forever be remembered for the memorable Bedlam battles with former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton. When Kelvin returned to Stillwater on Dec. 8, 2018, he couldn’t help but break into tears speaking about Sutton, who died in 2020, and the games they played against each other.

“It was the greatest stretch of Bedlam basketball history,” Kellen said. “There’s an entire generation of kids who grew up from Oklahoma who fell in love with basketball because they fell in love with Bedlam.”

Almost every season the two faced each other, at least one of the teams was ranked and a legit contender to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

“He just knew how much Eddie pushed him to be great,” Kellen said. “How good those Oklahoma State teams were and how good Coach Sutton was, it pushed and motivated and helped elevate my dad and those Oklahoma teams to the best they could be, because you knew what was sitting 70 miles north of you and that healthy level of competition raised both programs to reach the heights they did. Without the other, they might not have.”

Kelvin’s Sooners spoiled the Cowboys’ final game inside pre-expanded Gallagher-Iba Arena on March 4, 2000. Nolan Johnson scored 21 points as OU ended its in-state rival’s 16-game home win streak.

“If you were to ask my dad what are his three favorite games he’s ever been a part of," Kellen said, "I guaran-damn-tee you the 2000 game to close out Gallagher-Iba, will always be No. 3. Unless we win four national championships, that game will always be in the top three.”

When OU struggles, endures tournament droughts or loses a tough game, it’s inevitable to find fans on social media or message boards calling for the Sooners to try and lure Kellen away from his assistant head coach role under his father, something other schools have been unsuccessful at. Kellen’s contract he signed in 2023, formalizes the succession plan upon Kelvin’s departure from Houston, designating him head coach in-waiting.

Even though he’s a Normanite, he met his wife, Tonya, and has raised his family in Houston and it’s unlikely he’ll move on from the program anytime soon.

“I don’t know,” Kellen said of returning to Norman one day. “I think it would be really disrespectful to Houston. I could talk all day about how much I love and appreciate and cherish my time at Oklahoma. But I’m infatuated with Houston and my memories are of Oklahoma. My family’s memories are of Houston.

"I was raised in Norman but I became an adult in Houston and nothing will ever take what me, myself and I did, but there’s an us that is attached to Houston that I love, man.”

When Houston’s plane arrives in Norman and its buses pull up to the arena Saturday, it won’t be like any other regular-season game the Sampsons have ever coached on the road. From every nook and cranny Kellen used to play in as a child, to the season ticket holders in the front row to Toby Keith’s empty seat next to Joe Castiglione, nothing will be normal.

The Sampsons didn’t just coach, play or go to OU, every fiber of their being was about pouring into the university. Every day after school until he could drive, Kellen was picked up from Monroe Elementary and Alcott Middle School and shuttled over to the Lloyd Noble Center like it was his daycare.

There isn’t a square inch of the venue he hasn’t explored and he couldn’t put a number on how many concerts he was kicked out of because he was climbing into the rafters. He was even there when construction workers poured the concrete for OU’s practice gym — and his initials are scratched in there to prove it.

For people who knew the family best in Norman, they’re just looking forward to seeing their old friends again.

“I’m happy for Kelvin and all the great success he’s had at Houston,” Brown said. “I’m a Houston basketball fan, I like teams that play hard. I’ll be pulling for the Sooners, but …”

One might think Kelvin, commonly known for being all business, would be fully in game mode once he arrives in Norman. But his son said he will take the time to reminisce about the old days here.

Until tipoff of course.

“He surprises me there sometimes,” Kellen said. “There are times that I think it won't mean much to him and then it really touches him deeply. … He will have an emotion. But I do know this, for all the reasons, all of us will be thrilled to hurry up and throw the ball up because then it'll be normal.”

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OU vs. No. 1 Houston

TIPOFF: 7 p.m. Saturday at Lloyd Noble Center in Norman (ESPN2)

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Kelvin Sampson returns to OU with top-ranked Houston basketball in tow