Florida’s hallmark since the calendar turned to 2025 has been their defense. In the end, Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars committed turnovers on their final four possessions of the game, and were not able to get a shot off in the final six seconds, allowing the Gators to win their third National Championship.
For the 69-year-old Sampson, this was the deepest run of his head coaching career. There is a possibility this would also have been his best chance at that elusive first title.
Sampson has an overall coaching record of 798-355 (.692), including 299 wins since taking over in Houston in 2014. Sampson was the 1995 and 2024 Associated Press Coach of the Year, won Coach of the Year twice in the Big 12 Conference, four times in the American Athletic Conference, once in the old Big Eight, and once in the Pac-10. Sampson is the only head coach in history to win the award in the Big 8, leave the conference, return after the conference expanded to 12 (now 16), and win the award again.
This trip for Houston was their third in program history, marking the first since the legendary Phi Slamma Jamma squads in 1983 and 1984. Future Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon fell to Michael Jordan in 1983, and Jim Valvano’s Cinderella in 1984. To lose a heartbreaker on Monday to Todd Golden’s Gators may garner Houston the most snakebit program in the history of the men’s Final Four.
On the NCAA’s list of winningest men’s head coaches, Sampson currently ranks 32nd. Achieving 20 wins next year would vault Sampson into the top 25 all time, but only five other coaches with more wins did not win a National Championship. One of those names is current Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes, who will turn 71 before next season. Barnes has not coached a team to the Final Four since 2003, when he was at Texas, and Tennessee has never made a Final Four in program history. Their best look was this year as a 2-seed in the Midwest Region, but were handled soundly by the Cougars in the Elite Eight.
The coaching matchups for the National Championship had the possibility for a legend against a marquee upstart. Bruce Pearl (Auburn) has over 700 wins, but one Final Four appearance prior to last weekend. Todd Golden (Florida) and Jon Scheyer (Duke) were making their first appearances in the Final Four, and both were in just their third year at their current schools. While personally I was hoping for a Duke/Florida final, as my two favorite programs in the country), I knew this would not be a game I could watch with a good conscience, as someone had to lose.
Any of the potential matchups would get their head coach their first championship. Florida had not won the title since 2007, Duke since 2015, and we know Auburn and Houston never had.
The unfortunate storyline however was that three of the four coaches came in with previous NCAA violations on their resume. Pearl was given a three-year “show-cause” order between 2011-14 while at Tennessee, Golden earlier this year, and Sampson had a five-year “show-cause” order from his time at Indiana.
Show-cause is defined by the NCAA as any penalties imposed against a coach will remain with that coach, even if they take a job with another school. The order is not suspended if that coach leaves for a job in the NBA, as the penalty is based on a set time. Any school that hires a coach with a show-cause order could face severe penalties of their own if that coach commits additional infractions while still under the order. This typically does not happen, as many schools stray far away from hiring a coach still with a show-cause period. Jim Harbaugh led the Michigan Wolverines to an undefeated season, and the 2023 National Championship. Even after leaving to take the head coaching job with the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers, Should he decide to return to college in any capacity, Harbaugh is under a show-cause order until 2028, and would be suspended for the first year of his new job.
Sampson was forced to resign from Indiana in 2008, after NCAA violations of texting recruits, most notably Eric Gordon, who is currently coming to the end of his 18th year in the NBA. Gordon was the 2017 NBA Sixth Man of the Year with the Houston Rockets.
Pearl and Sampson are also only two of the four head coaches in NCAA men’s basketball history to be hired after receiving a show-cause order.
Even after a 4-3 start that saw Houston fall to #15 in the AP Poll, from Week 10 on, Houston never fell out of the Top 10, and only went backwards in the poll once. Houston has won 30 or more games five of the last seven years. The only two years they fell short were 28 wins in their trip to the Final Four in 2021, and 23 in the Covid-shortened 2020. In fact, after being ranked at #25 going into their matchup against Connecticut on January 23, 2020, Houston has not fallen out of the AP Poll, has not been out of the Top 20 since the start of the 2021 season, and spent the entire 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons ranked in the Top 10.
Players are what win games. Coaches are the ones that put those players in situations to get there. A tip of the cap to an incredible season for Kelvin Sampson and the Houston Cougars, with eyes already turning to the 2026 Final Four…In Indianapolis.
-JC24
-JC24