KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For the first time in his 69 years on this Earth, Kelvin Sampson wrote “net time” on the white board on Friday night after advancing to the Big 12 championship game.
With his grandson and granddaughter zooming by as he stood just outside the coaches’ locker room at T-Mobile Center — a second net freshly cut after a 72-64 win over Arizona to win the Big 12 tournament — Sampson started to reminisce on the other times in his 46 years of coaching that he would have been justified to write those words. Back in the early 2000s, he had teams good enough at Oklahoma to win on the sport’s final Monday, but he still had so many years left on the sidelines. He’s always been a man filled with urgency — that’s obvious to anyone who watches him coach — but the hourglass had barely leaked back then.
What compelled Sampson to write that message on Friday was, in his son’s words, because the Cougars have “an angle at it.”
“Because this team can,” Kellen Sampson said, the left unsaid being “win a national title.”
The reason for such optimism is because Houston is one of the few programs in the country that retained a very good core — one that was a No. 1 seed a year ago — and while it lost its star in Jamal Shead, Sampson replaced him with a talented player in former Oklahoma guard Milos Uzan.
Milos Uzan!
That’s it, that’s the tweet! You the truth 7!🔥🔥
— Jamal shead (@Thejshead) March 16, 2025
Uzan picked Houston because he had been on two solid teams at Oklahoma, but neither had made the NCAA Tournament and he wanted to go somewhere where he could compete for a national championship. Soon after arriving at Houston, on a Friday afternoon in July, Uzan teared up at the end of a workout with his position coach, Quannas White, because he was frustrated with how hard White was coaching him when he felt like he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“No one has ever coached me like this,” Uzan told White that day.
“It’s going to be well worth it in the end,” White shot back.
White was also prepping Uzan for Sampson, who he says is always hardest on his point guards, and White should know — he was Sampson’s starting point guard for two seasons at Oklahoma, the first of which ended in a Final Four in 2002. White also knew what Uzan was in for once actual practice started, but he had the misfortune of being the only newcomer in the rotation.
“The heating lamp was on Los, and that’s not always fun,” Kellen said. “No matter how much people are encouraging and lifting you up, it wears heavy sometimes.”
Uzan got a delayed start on the transition to the Houston way after breaking his nose in October. He struggled during a 4-3 start, especially in a return to his hometown of Las Vegas at the Player’s Era Festival, where the Cougars lost twice in three games and Uzan fouled out in both games. He’d also fouled out in a loss to Auburn, which was the second game of the season. The losses to Alabama and Auburn didn’t really put up any red flags — because both were considered title contenders and both were close — but losing to San Diego State on the final day in Vegas made everyone nationally start to wonder if the loss of Shead was too much for Houston to overcome this season.
Sampson says he’s often gone to practice the lost few years having to create adversity for his team because the Cougars have won so much, but those late-November losses did that for him. Uzan was trying to just to fit around everyone else, and Sampson would constantly yell at him “don’t blend in.”
“How will you know if you’re great unless you try to be great?” Sampson remembers asking his point guard. “Why would you want to be average? What is the goal coming here — what’s the least I’ve got to do to get through this? No, put your neck out there. It might get chopped off, but you’ll grow another one. That’s what this life’s about.”
Sampson’s one guiding principle since spending seven seasons in the NBA was that guards in this era are so talented that you don’t necessarily have to run plays to get them shots. From Rob Gray to Quentin Grimes to his trio now: He’s told them all to play fearless.
“We don’t play in a box,” Sampson said.
Once the Big 12 season started, White noticed that the message started to get through to Uzan, and lately, the confidence has really started to ooze. Coming into Saturday’s championship game, Uzan had scored in double figures in 13 of 15 games.
At halftime on Saturday, Uzan was on his way to double-figures again — he had eight points — but when the buzzer sounded with Houston trailing by five, Sampson turned and speed walked off the court without talking to a soul and went straight to the white board. “I could not wait to get in the locker room,” he said.
Sampson knew exactly what the Cougars needed to do to turn the game in their favor. In the first meeting, Arizona’s bigs had played in a drop coverage and so Houston’s guards were able to get to their pull-up jumpers. This time around Arizona’s bigs were hedging ball screens and forcing the ball out of the guards’ hands.
Instead of setting ball screens with the bigs, Sampson decided to set ghost screens with a guard and then drive, ideally forcing a switch to get the matchup the Cougars wanted. No one is better in these scenarios than Uzan, because he can drive either direction and also has one of the best floaters in college basketball.
Uzan lived at the Big 12 logo in the paint in the second half, scoring 17 of his career-high 25 points and dishing out three of his four assists after halftime.
“I get in there and get to my money (shot) with the floater,” he said. “I work on that every day.”
The Wildcats did an admirable job limiting Houston’s leading scorer LJ Cryer, who finished with 9 points on 3-of-10 shooing, but Uzan, Emanuel Sharp (17 points) and backup guard Mylik Wilson (9 points) took turns attacking the basket behind those ghost screens.
“Once we got downhill,” Sampson said, “our confidence started to soar.”
The Coogs started the second half on a 6-0 run to take the lead and led most of the half, with Arizona pulling back in front with just over five minutes left and then Uzan immediately answering, getting KJ Lewis on his heels and burying a 3 to immediately take back the lead.
Sampson marvels at the fact that his team has now won 26 of the last 27 games, including 13 in a row away from home. The reason for that consistency is a willingness when there’s a moment when it’s necessary for someone to be fearless and “not afraid to miss a shot and not afraid to fail.”
The next mission awaits next week at the NCAA Tournament, where the Cougars (30-4) should be a No. 1 seed for the third-straight tournament. Sampson is not sure if he has the best team. He says he doesn’t know how to judge those SEC schools. “Those four teams look like the best four teams in the country,” he said of Auburn, Florida, Alabama and Tennessee.
But when he’s comparing his own team with past versions, he starts to compare this one to the 2023 version, which entered the NCAA Tournament as the top-ranked team at KenPom but with leading scorer Marcus Sasser hobbled. (Sasser injured his groin muscle in the AAC semifinals and was never the same.)
“That team wasn’t going to win without him,” Sampson said. “That team wasn’t as mature as this team is. This team is more mature.”
And this one is healthy.
Even though this week started with a scare, sixth-year starting forward J’Wan Roberts spraining his right ankle in Thursday’s quarterfinal win, Sampson expects Roberts to be fine by the time the NCAA Tournament starts next Thursday. Roberts tried to convince Sampson on Saturday morning that he could play in the Big 12 title game. He even went through pregame with his uniform on, but he was instructed to put a boot back on his foot.
Sampson says he also had one other motive: He wanted Arceaneaux to start in his place and get more minutes than he’s played lately, so he could increase his confidence for the next few weeks. It went so well over the final two days in Kansas City — the Coogs won by 20 on Friday against BYU — that Sampson will head into this postseason with a new changeup.
“What’s exciting for us,” Kellen said, “is that we keep finding additional ceiling space as we go.”
The 39-year-old son and coach-in-waiting then added what he hopes that will mean: Two nets down; two more to go.
(Top photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
