Houston men’s basketball has become a machine under coach Kelvin Sampson, an unlikely national juggernaut that has risen to the upper echelon of the sport after spending the better part of the previous 30 years in the metaphorical wilderness.
Since the start of the 2018-19 season, Sampson’s fifth at the helm, the Cougars have gone 216-35, winning an absurd 86.1% of their games. They’ve made it to at least the Sweet 16 in each of the past six seasons in which there has been an NCAA Tournament. In each of the past three tournaments, they’ve earned a No. 1 seed. They’ve made two Final Fours in the past five seasons. Perhaps most impressively, they seamlessly made the transition from the American Athletic Conference to the Big 12, posting a 34-4 record in their first two seasons in arguably the most difficult league in the country.
On Monday night, all those years of building Houston up from a commuter school that played in front of small crowds in a dingy, outdated arena into a model of sustained success will culminate with a national championship game appearance against Florida.
For all the Cougars have accomplished in recent years, a list that could soon include a national title, the program is perhaps best known for a group of players it had 40 years ago.
In the early 1980s, at what could still be considered the zenith of Houston basketball, the Cougars were carried by a group of stars that earned one of the greatest, most memorable ...
