Kelvin Sampson may go down as the as the best men’s basketball coach Oklahoma’s has ever had. Not for me. He’s No. 2 and it isn’t close. But he might. It all depends on who’s writing the history and if it’s a Kelvin guy, well, it will be Kelvin.
Because if there’s one thing Sampson can do, it’s breed loyalty. And if there’s another, it’s win. And if there’s another, it’s win consistently. And if there’s another, well, frankly, it’s alienate so many whose loyalty he never bred.
Such a lightning rod, Sampson.
He’s leaving OU the winner of 279 basketball games.
That’s a lot of games. He went to the NCAA Tournament 11 of 12 seasons and that’s a lot of Madness. He won three straight Big 12 tournaments and if that’s not delivering excitement to your fans, nothing is.
He can coach.
No doubt.
But it was time for him to go.
No doubt.
Sampson will be reinvigorated at Indiana. He’ll make blue-collar lunch-pailers out of whatever he finds today at Bloomington and he’ll be a lot better than Mike Davis starting today. Because his kids will play hard and Hoosier fans are dying for a team that overachieves and Sampson will deliver it there.
Even after he quit delivering it here.
The coach who made his name by doing more with less, and maybe a couple of seasons by doing something with nothing, had started doing less with more; that is, as long as he could keep more from transferring.
Anybody who failed to see the issues facing, as Sampson so loved to call it, Sooner Basketball, had to be wearing blinders.
When your program becomes a turnstyle — Drew Lavender, Lawrence McKenzie, Larry Turner, Brandon Foust, De’Angelo Alexander — you have a problem.
When you return four starters from a team that won the Big 12 regular season championship and go seven consecutive games to end the season beating nobody by more than a point, you have a problem.
When the NCAA’s waiting in Park City, Utah, you have a problem.
Even Sampson’s perpetual backers were left shaking their heads after Wisconsin-Milwaukee made the Sooners look like Wisconsin-Appleton two weeks ago in Jacksonville.
Sampson’s last Sooner team fought nothing like his previous Sooner teams. And maybe that’s the sign nobody, Sampson most of all, can shake.
For everybody who never liked him in the first place for everything his team’s couldn’t do, he was putting a preseason top-10 team on the court that reflected little of what his teams had always done.
So it was time to leave.
Perhaps he’s arriving in Bloomington a happy man. Because for all his success, a pleased Sampson was so hard to find.
There were never enough people at his games. There was never enough positive press coverage, or enough press, period. There were days he would repeat his win-loss record over and over again in the same postgame press conference, like any of us didn’t already know.
You wondered where the chip on his shoulder came from. You wondered why he seemed so reluctant to enjoy his success.
One day, after winning one of those Big 12 tournaments, somebody asked him if everybody forgot about the Sooners. Talk about a question in his wheelhouse. Nobody ever respected OU enough.
Yeah, a lot of people forgot plenty about his team, Sampson said.
What did they forget?, I asked.
“I don’t know, Clay. Why don’t you answer that one.”
Apparently, I had forgotten something, too.
That was just Sampson being Sampson.
I hope he finds peace.
And I hope the Sooners find a coach who already has.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
OU Sports
Related Photos
Discussion
Horning: It was time for him to go
Commentary
- OU Sports
-
-
Sooners did not show up to play
Texas had something to play for. So there’s that. If the Longhorns are to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, this was just the kind of game they absolutely had to win....
-
With W.V. set free by Big East, Big 12 schedule’s out and it’s backloaded for Sooners
With West Virginia finally receiving its release from the Big East Conference on Tuesday, the Big 12 Conference was finally able to release its conference football schedule for the 2012 season....
-
Red River rut
The rut Oklahoma has been trying to escape for the last two weeks continued to grow deeper with a 69-58 loss to Texas Tuesday night at Lloyd Noble Center....
-
OU gearing up for Texas’ Brown
If Oklahoma guard Steven Pledger had his way, tonight’s meeting with Texas will come down to two players: himself and Longhorn guard J’Covan Brown....
-
Sooners will have a dramatically new look up and down the order, on the mound
The clubhouse at L. Dale Mitchell Park hasn’t changed over the last year. Just about everything else has since the 2011 baseball season ended. The locker stalls have 20 new nameplates. The coaches’ locker room has two new ones as well. ...
-
Despite hard fight, UConn wins big
By its own standards, the Connecticut team that took the floor Monday night at Lloyd Noble Center was not in the same class as its previous incarnations. But a down year for the seven-time national champions is still better than just ...
-
Believe it or not, OU women are progressing
Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma appeared plenty willing to embarrass Oklahoma for a third time in seven games....
-
OU reeling from stunning loss to Texas Tech
As Oklahoma’s players headed toward the exit at United Spirit Arena on Saturday night, most had dazed looks on their faces. The 65-47 loss to Texas Tech was something they didn’t see coming....
-
Husky challenge
No time might seem like a good time to face Connecticut. The Huskies are always terrific and this season will enter Lloyd Noble Center likely ranked No. 2 following Notre Dame’s Sunday loss to West Virginia....
-
Sooners put finishing touches on perfect opener
Oklahoma capped off a perfect opening weekend of softball on Sunday with an 11-1 victory over Kent State. The Sooners were led by another strong outing from pitcher Keilani Rickets and an offensive explosion by Allee Allen....
- More OU Sports Headlines
-
Sooners did not show up to play
