Houston reached Monday night's championship game through a brand of basketball that isn't played at other places. The Cougars, 35-4 on the season, have lost one game since Thanksgiving week -- by one point in overtime to Elite Eight participant Texas Tech. Two of their other three losses also came in overtime. They lead all of Division I in scoring defense and field goal percentage defense. Houston wins that much and plays best-in-class defense because the program finds talented players who are willing to practice like this:
This was the HOUSTON practice video talked about on The Mismatch pod. Relevant. pic.twitter.com/FiuZORGvhe
— Chris Vernon (@ChrisVernonShow) April 6, 2025
The common player doesn't practice like that, it has to be engrained into him from repetition and reinforced through culture. And Houston's culture starts with how head coach Kelvin Sampson fills out his staff.
Our players look at our staff as family. All of my auxiliary staff that we have in our program were former managers. I don't take resumes, and I don't take phone calls; I hire everything from within. Everybody thinks they need to go hire the best recruiter, we develop our staff like we develop our players. That's culture," he said ahead of Houston's semifinal win over Duke.
Sampson has five assistant coaches. There's his son, Kellen Sampson, who played for Kelvin Sampson at Oklahoma, GA'd under him at Indiana, and has been with him at Houston since 2014. Associate head coach Qannas White played and GA'd for Sampson at Oklahoma and has been on his Houston staff since 2017; on Tuesday, White will assume his duties as the head coach at Louisiana. Special assistant to the head coach Hollis Price played for Sampson at Oklahoma and started at UH as director of player development when Sampson took the job in 2014. Assistant KC Beard started at Houston as video coordinator in 2014.
Off the court, Sampson's director of basketball operations is his daughter, Lauren. His video coordinator, Matthew McDonald, started as a student manager. Director of program strategy and player relations Bilal Batley was a student manager for Sampson at Oklahoma, a GA at Indiana, and has been at Houston since 2017. Associate director of operations Will Finch was a student manager under Sampson at Indiana. Director of basketball operations and basketball strategy Bobby Champagne was an assistant for Sampson at Oklahoma.
That's approximately 321 years of corporate experience walking throughout the building. That, Sampson says, is the culture that drove Houston to the championship game.
"We don't have a lot of signs in our building. I don't know what those signs mean anyway. There's one sign that you'll see a lot in our building, it just says culture. How you do anything is how you do everything, right? Being on time, treating people with respect, having the right attitude every day, giving great effort every day in whatever it is you're asked to do. Our kids are pretty good at that."