Why did Kelvin Sampson leave Indiana to lead Houston to March Madness glory?

Kelvin Sampson has taken a long and winding path to the 2025 NCAA championship game with Houston.

The reigning Division I coach of the year has found success everywhere he's been -- with the exception of the highest profile place he'd landed. Why did Sampson's Indiana University tenure last less than two seasons and end with his forced resignation?

Let's start with Sampson's beginning. He was a seven-time letterwinner in basketball and baseball at what's now UNC-Pembroke. A member of the Lumbee Native American community, his father was a coach and athlete who helped drive the Ku Klux Klan out of nearby Maxton. When his playing career ended, two years as a graduate assistant and two more as an assistant coach led him to his first head coaching job at 26 years old.

Sampson led NAIA Montana Tech from an 0-15 record in conference play in his debut to back-to-back Frontier Conference titles just three years later. That led him to an assistant job at Washington State, then a promotion to top dog two years after that in 1987. He led the Cougars to a single NCAA Tournament appearance over seven years of .500 basketball, but that was enough to land the top job at Oklahoma.

The Sooners were a softer landing spot. He took over for four-time Big 8 coach of the year Billy Tubbs, who'd led the team to the national title game years seven years earlier. Sampson was NCAA coach of the year in his debut and reeled off nine straight NCAA Tournament appearances including a spot in the 2002 Final Four. That put him on Indiana's radar. Bob Knight's dismissal had been followed by six seasons of diminishing returns from Mike Davis, leading Sampson to shoulder the massive burden of the Hoosiers' grand expectations. He was hired in 2006.

But Sampson had NCAA rule skeletons in his closet even before heading to Bloomington. He'd been subject to a years-long investigation with the Sooners that turned up more than 500 impermissible phone calls to recruits. He was handed a one-year ban from in-person recruiting and calling potential players before his Indiana tenure even began. He broke that ban in his first season, attending conference calls with recruits, sending impermissible texts and sparring with the University of Illinois in a questionably legal battle for the services of top recruit (and Indianapolis native) Eric Gordon.

The NCAA announced an investigation into Sampson's recruiting in the middle of the 2007-2008 season -- his second with the program. Two weeks later, Sampson and the university came to a settlement, paying out $750,000 of his remaining contract in exchange for his resignation. He was handed a five-year show-cause penalty, preventing other NCAA teams from hiring him unless it could "show cause" he'd rehabilitated and learned from his infractions and effectively banning him from the sideline for half a decade.

Despite 14 NCAA Tournament appearances in 15 years, Sampson was kicked out of the college ranks while he served his punishment. He took a handful of assistant roles in the NBA before returning to the game in 2014 as head coach of the Houston Cougars. The once proud program had been to only a single big dance in the 20 years before his hiring. After a brief rebuilding period, the veteran head coach got Houston running like a well-oiled machine. 2025 would mark the program's eighth-straight NCAA Tournament invitation if not for the scuttled COVID-19 season in 2019-2020. The Cougars have climbed into the AP top 10 in six of his last eight seasons.

Now he's one win from the crowning achievement of his career -- a national title. But even if he doesn't cut down the nets Monday night, more than 700 wins and three Final Four appearances have cemented his place as one of the game's most successful coaches. Even after getting hit with the show-cause penalty that chased him out of Bloomington.