Kelvin Sampson has one last place to go

Thoughts on Houston as the preseason No. 1

Photo credit: Philadelphia Inquirer

In the summer of 2021, a reporter asked Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, in so many words, to give up his secret: How?

How did his program keep doing this? How did it grow, seemingly exponentially, year after year? How did it constantly lose crucial players, replace them with relative unknowns, and not only fail to fail but somehow keep getting better? How did it become the type of place that you could all but ignore in the offseason, whose personnel moves didn’t really matter, so many minor details relative to the larger and more salient truth that one way or another Houston would end up being good?

How did Houston become self-sustaining?

The answer is that it didn’t; of course it didn’t. Nothing about Sampson’s process is automatic. This is not perpetual motion, where a gentle tap sets some sleek machine smoothly gliding. It reads more like the fireman crew of a coal engine on a World War I-era steamship, all heat and steel and will. Houston’s rise is attributable to the same sort of mundane, way-easier-said-than-done stuff that Sampson demands from his players: total devotion, tireless work ethic, ultimate buy-in. It is simple in concept but daunting to pull off, and the fact that Sampson keeps managing it — keeps building contending teams out of unsuspecting parts — is one of the most remarkable stories of college basketball’s past decade.

These were the thoughts that occurred when Bart Torvik released his updated 2024-25 preseason projections this week. Houston ranked No. 1. For exactly one split second this was surprising. It shouldn’t have been.