Houston's Kelvin Sampson becomes 17th Division I coach to reach 800 wins

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HOUSTON (AP) — Kelvin Sampson earned the 800th win of his 37-year coaching career with No. 2 Houston’s 75-57 win over Lehigh on Monday night.

Sampson, who is in his 12th season at Houston, became the 17th NCAA Division I coach to reach 800 wins. He is the fourth active coach to reach the milestone, joining Rick Barnes, John Calipari and Bill Self.

“Putting Dean Smith and Kelvin Sampson in the same sentence doesn’t seem right to me,” Sampson said. “He’s an icon, and I’m just a ball coach. But it’s been fun. When you get to be 70, you know the end is near. Most of my contemporaries are just about all gone, but I still enjoy it.”

Sampson has a career record of 800-354, including 300-84 since taking over the Cougars in 2014. He went 73-45 at Montana Tech from 1980-85; 103-103 at Washington State from 1987-93; 281-107 at Oklahoma from 1994-2006; and 43-15 at Indiana from 2006-08.

Following the game, Houston played a video package with former players, including current NBA players who played under Sampson at Houston, Marcus Sasser, Quentin Grimes and Jamal Shead, congratulating the coach on the accolade. Magic Johnson also appeared in the video congratulating Sampson, who was a graduate assistant at Michigan State in 1979-80.

Sampson was presented a commemorative 800th win ball by his wife Karen and Houston Athletic Director Eddie Nunez.

“When I first started coaching, I think I lived in fear of not being able to hold a job,” Sampson told the crowd while surrounded by his team. “You might know this about coaching, but if you didn’t win, you didn’t get to keep your job. So, as Karen and I started growing our family, I said ‘I think I’m going to keep this job because I love doing it, but I got to work harder and make sure I get good players.’”

The Cougars unveiled their second NCAA Final Four banner in the last five years on Monday night after Houston finished as national runner-up last season. Sampson has taken the Cougars to seven NCAA Tournaments. He has taken four different schools to the NCAA Tournament and has 20 NCAA trips over his career.

Sampson said he had gratitude and gratefulness. He said he was grateful for his family and being able to finish his career at Houston among other things.

“I’m grateful for the players who played for me, I’m grateful for the administrators that helped me along the way,” Sampson said. “I’m grateful for the players, the fans, the friends because you don’t do something like this without crazy help from other people. This has been an amazing journey that we call coaching. It’s such a job where your joy comes from helping guys get better, and we have a lot of guys on this team that need to get better.”

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