Houston’s Kelvin Sampson vs. Florida’s Todd Golden is riveting matchup, battle of ages for NCAA championship

SAN ANTONIO — It was Nov. 13, 1981 in Bismarck, North Dakota, when Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology defeated Lake Region College as part of the Mary College Invitational. The coach of the winning side that cold Friday night was barely 26 years old. His name was Kelvin Sampson. Montana Tech’s 77-67 win was the first victory of what now registers by any objective examination as a Hall of Fame-worthy career.

On Monday night — 15,851 days removed and about 1,200 miles south of Bismarck — Sampson will go for win No. 800 here in the heart of Texas. He’ll try for it against Florida’s Todd Golden, who was born three-and-a-half years after Sampson’s first triumph back in ’81. 

Among a plethora of intriguing storylines gilding this national final, the juxtaposition between Sampson and Golden’s timelines and respective approaches to coaching ranks among the most compelling. 

In a sport where coaches often have a web of interconnecting ties, Sampson and Golden have yet to cross each other’s orbits. This will be the first time they’ve faced each other; the head-to-head marks the second-widest age gap between coaches in a national title game. The only larger one came in 2011 — also in Texas; Houston instead of San Antonio — when Jim Calhoun (68) and his UConn Huskies conquered over Brad Stevens (34) and his Butler Bulldogs in the ugliest national final of the modern era (53-41). 

“I used to come to the tournament when I was a young coach, I would sit in those stands and look at the two coaches in the championship game,” Sampson said. “You think you’d like to be there one day, if you could ever get a chance.”

His chance, 1,154 games in, is finally here.

Sampson is going for a sixth win in this tournament, a 35th win this season, the 800th of his career — and the second straight against an upstart coach with a world of promise at their feet. On Saturday, 37-year-old Jon Scheyer thought he had the game until he didn’t. 

“Last night I got so many texts. I haven’t returned any. There’s too many to even look at,”  Sampson said Sunday in the afterglow of his team’s astonishing late-game toppling of Duke. “I saw Tubby (Smith) and Rick Barnes, Tom Izzo, Pop (Gregg Popovich), a bunch of the older coaches. They all kind of had similar messages to me. Win one for the old guys, something like that.”

Experience has mattered in this tournament — specifically the experience of Houston’s players. Their maturity and rocksteadiness was paramount to pulling off one of the all-time Final Four comebacks.

Now we find out if Golden’s hyper-analytic onslaught of coaching acumen can win out over Sampson’s more primal approach. 

“Analytically, us and Houston on KenPom, our efficiency margin is within point one of each other over a hundred possessions,” Golden said Sunday. “I think it’s going to be a contrasting battle that way. Hopefully we can get the game up and down a little bit. They’re going to impose their will as they’ve done on everybody this year.” 

Houston ranks No. 1 in defensive efficiency at KenPom and is holding opponents to 58.5 points per game. Florida ranks No. 2 in offensive efficiency and clocks 85.3 points on average. The contrast marks the first time since the 1974 national title game between NC State and Marquette that we’ll have one team averaging 85 or more scheming against another allowing 60 or fewer. 

Golden has gone up against, and defeated, the likes of Barnes, John Calipari, Bruce Pearl, Nate Oats and Dan Hurley this season. Sampson stands as his last great challenge. On a personal level, it could be his toughest assignment yet. Only appropriate that it will play out on a national championship stage.

“A little underrated, as hard as that might be to believe,” Golden said of Sampson’s career. “He’s been at it a little longer than I have. It’s going to be a huge challenge for me to compete against him.”

If you think this is analytics vs. manalytics, you’d be mistaken. For a long time, Sampson was someone who coached on instinct and trusted his eyes above all. It’s how he took Oklahoma to a Final Four in 2002 and won 500 games before taking over Houston’s downtrodden program 11 years ago. But as I wrote earlier this year, Sampson’s foray into the NBA after his ugly exodus at Indiana in 2008 altered his mind on basketball forever. 

“There are certain analytics he values, 100%,” Houston assistant coach Kellen Sampson told CBS Sports.

For 10 years now, Houston has tracked shot-contest percentages. They’ve logged tips and deflections in every game and transposed the numbers to see if those plays result in points on the ensuing Houston possessions. 

“Activity equals productivity” is what Sampson calls it. 

“It’s why he’s in his prime, and he’s thriving in this,” Kellen said. “He’s more analytical than people know.”

You can look at the win over Duke as a prime example of Sampson’s gut and his reliance on the data to give Houston the best chance to overcome the steepest odds. Down seven with less than 40 seconds to go on Saturday, Sampson was adamant his players to not foul when the game was 66-59. 

“Most people would say, ‘Why don’t you foul?'” Sampson said. “We’re only down two possessions. If we can get a miss and a rebound, we have the ball down two possessions. If you foul them, they make both free throws, you’re down three possessions with the ball. You have to think the game entirely different. The climb becomes a little steeper.”

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The gambit worked, thanks in part to Duke’s inexperience and flustered rhythm giving Houston life. A stolen inbounds pass, a timely 3-pointer, and it all went the Cougars’ way. Plus: Houston was ferocious on the glass in the final 10 minutes. It’s vessel-bursting effort combined with intentional statistical strategy that gives Houston an extra seven or eight possessions every game, which is why this team has only been defeated once in regulation this season.

“They’re an incredibly efficient analytical team,” Golden said. “They don’t turn the ball over. They get back all their misses.”

For as amazing as Walter Clayton Jr. has been in this tournament, Golden’s surrounded him with the type of players who can uplift his talent as easily as they can make way for Clayton to go on personal runs that put teams away. 

The players will decide the game more than the coaches, but given Golden and Sampson’s influence and approach to program-building, Monday night’s result will also reflect on the winner’s blueprint to program-building. I was with Golden the first summer he got the job, at a time he was aggressively recruiting a player named Thomas Haugh. 

Now a sophomore, Haugh (9.9 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 2.1 apg) has been arguably the breakout guy in the SEC this season. 

When the ball tips Monday night, before the next two-or-so hours decide the national champion, Sampson and Golden will have made it to a moment on drastically different routes. It took one more than 43 years and multiple threats to his career to finally get 40 minutes from a title. The other is barely into his coaching life, arriving here ahead of schedule after off-the-court (and still unproven) allegations threatened his time as well earlier this season. 

“When you’re pressing 70, you look at things a lot differently,” Sampson said.

But that doesn’t make this moment any less sweet. 

One coach will step on a ladder Monday night, and when they do, it will prompt validation toward most everything they’ve done to get to make that moment a reality. Before they find that moment, they’ll have to coach against an opponent that’s brand new. They’ll have to outwit in a way they’ve never been asked — a fitting finish to what will be an epic push through one of the chalkiest NCAA Tournaments of all time.