WICHITA, Kan. – This is a story about transition. No, the coaches at Houston and Gonzaga who meet here in a second-round Midwest Region NCAA Tournament game Saturday aren’t going anywhere. Gonzaga’s Mark Few and Houston’s Kelvin Sampson have done just about everything they can do in their professional lives.
Everything except winning it all.
The pair of future hall of fame coaches have combined for 1,036 wins and four Final Fours in addition to a wealth of NBA and national team experience. But neither Few or Sampson have won a national championship and that is sticking out like a mountain range suddenly plopped down in the Kansas prairie surrounding this particular matchup.
Leave it, then, to an informed observer to put the stakes in context.
“When you get to this point, it’s time to cash one in,” said Kellen Sampson, his father’s top assistant for the Cougars.
Kellen was speaking only of Houston, knocking on the championship door as a No. 1 seed for the third consecutive year. But the 39-year-old son could have been talking about Gonzaga as well. Few has his own won-everything-but-the-big-one career. The game’s winningest active coach has spent 26 years winning 741 games but coming up agonizingly close losing championship games in 2017 and 2021.
“You put in all this energy and commitment just for regular-season success. That’s underselling the value of what we’ve already done,” Kellen Sampson added. “At some point in everybody’s life it’s gotta be OK to be greedy. I think that’s kind of where both coaches are.”
This is a story about transition because one of these coaches will keep chasing that career-long dream after Saturday. The other, well, at least Few is philosophical.
“It’s fine,” he said of ending his career without a championship. “I’ve had a great life. Listen, I’m as competitive as anybody, too crazy competitive. You get hooked on winning. You want to win everything.”
And then sometimes you can’t. Gonzaga’s rise to prominence spans parts of three decades. A private school in Spokane, Washington, proved it could play with the big boys. It still resides in the West Coast Conference playing a national schedule before Gonzaga plans to move to the Pac-12 in the 2026-27 academic year.
It is a March staple without a crown.
Houston is becoming a Lone Star copy of the Zags. Last week at the Big 12 Tournament, Sampson ruminated about getting knocked out of the 2021 Final Four by Baylor. Sampson made it a point to say, “We weren’t good enough” that year. Left unspoken was a truth that hung in the air afterward.
Now we are.
There is much evidence this is Kelvin Sampson’s best team ever. He has three proven scorers – L.J. Cryer, Emanuel Sharp and Milos Uzan. The Cougars are among the top 3-point shooters in the country. The defense is a given.
“He brings up that Baylor game a lot,” Sharp said of his coach. “I feel like every year since then we’ve had a team that could win the national championship … We’ve got all the tools … UConn was a great team but I still feel like last year we could have gotten to the Final Four and won.”
There is slow rumbling below the surface that suggests Kelvin Sampson may retire after this season – whether or not the Cougars win it all. But especially if that lifelong payoff comes next month in San Antonio.
“The way he coaches you’d think he’s 30,” Sharp added. “He’s the most consistent person I’ve seen, player and coach. He hasn’t changed.”
Kellen has already been designated as the head-coach-in-waiting. How long that wait is, has to be determined.
“‘Ready’ is a tricky word,” Kellen Sampson said. “When I first started to get some interviews, it revealed how ready I wasn’t. ‘Chief’ says nothing forces you to take an inventory of your life more than opportunity. There were a lot of inventory things I wasn’t ready for … I hadn’t put a lot of good thought to it.
“I’m more prepared today than I was yesterday.”
The father-son dynamic sometimes plays out in muted tones. When Kellen approaches his dad from behind during games it is with head bowed, almost in deference, to make a strategic point in his ear during a game. The son calls his father “Chief” which seems to fit that dynamic.
“There’s a little respect there, and also we spent 11 years [together],” Kellen said. “People ask me sometimes, ‘What’s it like working with your dad?’ We have figured out how to work together and love each other at the same time.”
Kelvin Sampson is closer to the end of his career at 69. The detour after Indiana led him to the NBA as an assistant for six years before taking the Houston job. Few is 62, long established as a made man in the profession, armed with an Olympic gold medal (as an assistant coach with the U.S. Men’s National Team last summer in Paris).
Since about 2015 the man has barely paused for a breath between basketball gigs – coaching in the Pan American Games, the U.S. Men’s Select Team, the FIBA World Cup team and last year in the Olympics.
There was some sort of serendipity at work this weekend. The last time Gonzaga lost an opening-round game was 17 years ago. A raw sophomore named Steph Curry from Davidson dropped 40 on the Bulldogs.
Few helped coach Curry last summer as an assistant with the national team.
“I just consider it the highest calling you can get as a college basketball coach,” Few said of his national team experience.
The two coaches became close when Kelvin Sampson started his career out West as both an assistant and head coach at Montana Tech and Washington State from 1980-1994.
“Unless you’re a big fly fisherman like me there aren’t many people getting to Butte, Montana,” Few said of Kelvin Sampson’s Tech days.
In 1989-90, Sampson’s Cougars lost 18 in a row.
“Washington State was obviously the hardest, toughest job in the Pac-10,” he recalled. “If it would have been a good job, they never would have hired me. They would have hired a real coach.”
That’s roughly the same time when the seeds were being planted for Gonzaga to grow into a national program under Dan Fitzgerald, Dan Monson and then Few.
Saturday’s game could have been a rematch of conference rivals. A couple of years ago Gonzaga was close to joining the Big 12 in realignment. If Houston had won that 2021 Final Four game vs. Baylor, it would have played Gonzaga in the championship game.
The matchup features No. 2 scoring team (Gonzaga) vs. No. 1 scoring defense (Houston). Gonzaga’s nine straight Sweet 16s is the longest streak in the nation. Houston is next with five. The Zags’ 26 straight trips to the NCAA Tournament is the third-longest active streak in the nation.
Through the last eight seasons Gonzaga and Houston are Nos. 1-2 in winning percentage. Few came into this season as the winningest active Division I coach. Sampson has ushered in a new era of Houston dominance not seen since the Phi Slama Jama days in the 1980s.
“We owe a debt of gratitude to Gonzaga,” Kellen Sampson said. “We were not a power conference team [in the American Conference] when we first started. They were just this example for us to chase. We sold the idea of being the Gonzaga of Texas for so long. Asking our administration, asking our fans to keep doubling down on the investment on us …
“Gonzaga tucked away in the eastern corner of Washington has become one of the best basketball brands in the country. Why not us?”
Sometimes the NCAA Tournament does this to teams. In terms of brand value, Houston-Gonzaga seems like it should be an Elite Eight or Final Four matchup. It is a second-round game only because Gonzaga entered with its lowest seed (No. 8 in the Midwest) since 2016.
But something unique – maybe unfair — is still at work. The No. 8 seed in the Midwest Region is also the No. 7 overall team in KenPom.com’s rankings going into Friday’s play. The selection committee has endured enough criticism but this disparity probably deserves an explanation.
Few’s teams like to push tempo, playing inside out. The list of big men he has coached is impressive – Adam Morrison, Drew Timme, Chet Holmgren and more. Massive 6-foot-9, 250-pound senior Graham Ike is the latest, leading the Zags in scoring. But watch redshirt sophomore Braden Huff who has started three career games. His last two starts have come in succession. Huff scored 18 points in the West Coast Conference championship game and in the first-round win vs. Georgia.
“They’ve been the standard offensively in America here the last 10 years,” Kellen Sampson said. “Nobody has run a better, cleaner, more efficient offense than them. What they’ve done has bled to all corners of the country.”
Khalif Battle is a 6-9 barrel-chested transfer guard who has played at four schools in six seasons. Through stops at Butler, Temple and Arkansas, Battle has chased the NCAA Tournament like Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny.
In his first career NCAA Tournament game, Battle scored 24 against Georgia.
“He told me he’s going to need me in March,” Battle said of Few. “I’m definitely going to take on the challenge. He recruited me here for these moments.”
The coaches’ longing Saturday will not be on display but it will be evident. It’s fair to say this is Few’s next chance to win it all. Considering his age, his roster and the alignment of the stars, this just might be Sampson’s best chance to win it all.
“That’s what makes it so urgent on this team,” Sharp said. “We know what he wants.”
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