SAN ANTONIO — The state of North Carolina will have plenty of Houston fans on Saturday night as the Cougars take on Duke in a highly anticipated Final Four battle between No. 1 seeds. Most of those from the Tar Heel State favoring the team in red will do so as North Carolina fans hoping to see the rival Blue Devils get eliminated.
But two hours to the south of Tobacco Road, along the South Carolina border in Robeson County, the cheers for Houston will come with far more sincere motives.
In the Lumbee Tribe’s hub of Pembroke, population 2,832, they will be rooting on Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, a local hero from this tightly knit and often overlooked community.
“We are just so proud of him,” Lumbee Tribe chairman John Lowery told CBS Sports. “He’s not just carrying his own banner and his own family’s name. But he’s carrying our tribe’s name. He’s carrying the banner for our tribe, and he’s carrying the banner for all the native people in the country.”
As Sampson sits at the apex of his decades-long coaching journey, the Lumbee Tribe is nearing the apex of a generations-long struggle for full federal recognition.
Duke’s Jon Scheyer and Houston’s Kelvin Sampson meet in Final Four after putting own stamps on their programs
Dennis Dodd
A Jan. 23 memo from the White House directed the Secretary of the Interior to submit a plan assisting the Lumbee Tribe in obtaining that goal “through legislation or other available mechanisms.”
It’s the closest the Lumbee have ever come to unwinding the 1956 Lumbee Act, which recognized the Lumbees as Native Americans but denied them full federal benefits.
“For the first time, people are hearing the story of the Lumbees,” said Robert Williams, a Lumbee Tribe member and Native American legal scholar at the University of Arizona. “Even Congress people who have never heard of the Lumbees, it’s now going to be covered that, ‘here’s this guy at the pinnacle of his career, he’s reached the Final Four, and he speaks proudly of being a Lumbee.’ People will probably Google that. What they’ll find is the history of the tribe and its desire for recognition.”
In Sampson, the Lumbee have a prominent and well-respected face who has often reflected on his home over his nearly four decades as a Division I head coach.
“It was an awesome place to grow up,” Sampson told CBS Sports. “I take a lot of pride in being from Pembroke.”
Sampson is the 2025 CBS Sports Coach of the Year, has produced 16 NBA Draft picks, is in his fourth Final Four and is likely destined for a spot in the Naismith Hall of Fame. But at his core, he is the son of Robeson County high school teaching and coaching legend John “Ned” Sampson, who once fought off the Ku Klux Klan in the Battle of Hayes Pond in 1958 when Kelvin was a toddler.
Ned, who died in 2014 at the age of 84, was a “pillar of the community,” Williams said.
“Especially in rural areas during the 50s, 60s and 70s, those were the people we really looked up to,” added Lowery. “They were role models. Ned was a role model to a lot of our youth. Now, those youth are grown and Mr. Ned, bless his soul, is gone now. But the thing is, he reached a lot of souls through his teaching and coaching.
“Thankfully, his spirit lives on through Kelvin.”
Sampson shaped by Lumbee culture
Kelvin attended UNC-Pembroke, which was founded to educate Lumbee, and played both basketball and baseball there before beginning his coaching career at Michigan State as a graduate assistant under Jud Heathcote.
Since then, he’s amassed nearly 800 victories as the head coach at Montana Tech, Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and Houston.
Through it all, he’s remained in touch with the town, university and the Lumbee culture that shaped him.
His wife, Karen, sits on UNC-Pembroke’s Board of Trustees. Kelvin was the keynote speaker for the UNC System Board of Governors luncheon in the spring of 2023 and was awarded a beaded eagle feather, which recognized his “extraordinary and lasting impact as a mentor and role model for young men, his ardent belief in the power of education and his unwavering support of his hometown community, the Lumbee Tribe and The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.”
“This is not somebody who you never see,” Lowery said. “It’s not someone who never comes back home. He’s very much still connected to our people, which makes it even easier to cheer him on.”
Kelvin is quick to highlight the achievements of peers from his Robeson County upbringing, pointing out the successes of others from Pembroke, some of whom he still counts as close friends.
But when it comes to national coaching success, Sampson’s achievements are unmatched.
“I constantly tell people, as native peoples, we are the minority of the minority,” Lowery said. “We are probably the most overlooked group in the country. To have one of our tribal members to not only become a Division I coach but to be a successful Division I coach, it’s just extraordinary.”
When Houston played at East Carolina in 2023, more than 100 people from Robeson County made the more than two-hour drive to support the living embodiment of what Mr. Ned stood for.
Last month, as Houston embarked on its NCAA Tournament journey, the Pembroke Lions Club made a banner in his honor. Groups from around the community posed with it in a show of support. Even amid the mayhem of March Madness, Sampson saw and felt the gesture.
“There’s some awesome people from Pembroke, and my wife keeps me informed,” Sampson said. “She sent me something that was on Instagram and Facebook where a lot of people were congratulating me. That made me feel good.”
Sampson’s story inspires many
If not for a five-year show-cause order applied by the NCAA for recruiting violations at Indiana that seem trivial in retrospect, there’d be even more to tout on Sampson’s impeccable résumé.
From that wreckage, Sampson has reconstructed a dormant Houston program into one of the nation’s most dominant college basketball forces.
“Of course he had that issue where he had to step down as the Indiana coach,” Williams said. “But, classic sort of Lumbee story, you get knocked down but you get up, you keep fighting and you do even better.”
Achieving full federal recognition will likely still take Congressional legislation for the Lumbee. Leaders are “optimistic,” Williams said, that the recent White House memo has generated enough momentum to make the goal a reality.
“That’s been a battle that’s been going on for over a century,” Williams said. “If anybody questions whether the Lumbees are real Indians, look at the fact that they’ve stayed with this battle long before there were casinos and things like that and have wanted that affirmation of their identity, that they’re native. They’re on the cusp of it right now.”
Sampson, too, is on the cusp of something special at Houston as he prepares to lead the Cougars against Duke with just two games separating him from his first national championship. But regardless of how things play out at the Alamodome, Sampson’s legacy has long been secure with the people back home
“He is living history, and it means a lot to tribal communities, even beyond ours, to see a native man who grew up in little ol’ Robeson County and went to little ol’ what was then Pembroke State College, to see him rise up through the ranks, to see him be this successful, to see him on college basketball’s biggest stage, it’s just remarkable,” Lowery said. “I’m just proud of him. I’m a very sentimental guy, and I have no idea if Kelvin is. But I know that he understands that.
“After his career is over and done and he’s sitting at home, I hope he does reflect back on how he blazed a trail for other natives and how he paved the way for future individuals to come out of tribal communities to be successful at a high level.”
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