My thoughts on Kelvin Sampson...

Crimsontothecore · Jan 21, 2009

the_ouskull said: ↑

I wrote this as a response to another thread, a quote from which I just listed, but wanted to post it as its own thread. This has been a long time coming. This is my Kelvin Sampson rant.

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Joe C. could have gotten rid of Kelvin when he got there in 1998, and nobody would have thought very much of it. Sure, Kelvin won National Coach of the Year (for the first of TWO times while he was at Oklahoma...) his first season, but he "did that with Billy's players," etc, etc... But what ELSE did he do?

1995: 1st Round NCAA upset loss to Manhattan.
1996: 1st Round NCAA beatdown at the hands of Temple.
1997: Healthy run in the conference tournament, losing to a hot Mizzou team in the finals. 1st Round NCAA loss to Stanford.
1998: Healthy run in the conference tournament, losing to a hot Kansas team in the finals. 1st Round NCAA loss to Indiana in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicated.

Tack onto all of that, the fact that he wasn't "Joe C's Guy," and yeah, getting rid of Sampson would have been really, really easy.

He didn't.

Joe C did what Joe C does. He recognized talent.

We were rewarded with a Sweet 16 trip in 1999, and then the beginning of the Hollis Price era at OU. We know how that went. Final Four. Elite Eight. Kelvin also picked up that 2nd Coach of the Year trophy that I mentioned earlier.

So what happened? My thoughts and honest opinion.

He was frustrated (remember that word, I'll be coming back to it) by the (behind-the-scenes) events of the end of the 2004 season, leading into 2005, and culminating with his "departure," in 2006. Namely, Lavender and Foust weren't exactly "Kelvin Guys," and the trouble that they got themselves into, both while at OU and afterwards, reflects that as well. So does the entire 2005 season, which ended with a PAINFUL 2nd Round loss to Utah. (And before any numbn*ts says, "coaching," Kelvin was, and is, PROVEN as a coach of the game of basketball. Lay the blame where it's due.)

How does a team that could roll a lineup of:

1 - Drew Lavender
2 - Lawrence McKenzie
3 - Nate Carter
4 - Kevin Bookout
5 - Taj Grey

Bench: Johnnie Gilbert, Brandon Foust, Terrell Everett, and a young David Godbold, and even Longar Longar, for all of those of you who inexplicably loved him.

...end up losing to Andrew Bogut-led Utah?

That team had no cohesiveness whatsoever. If you want to put THAT on Sampson, feel free, because it does fall under the duties of the job title "Coach" to a degree... But, he was tired of it; sick and tired of it, and at the end of the 2005 season, he thought it would end... but it didn't. Look at the major differences between the 2005 team and the 2006 team.

- No Drew, no Foust. They left. They weren't Kelvin guys to start with. We REALLY needed Drew that next season, but not if he was going to spend the majority of the season being "I don't give a sh*t" Drew instead of "Buzzer Beater at K-State" Drew. Where this really hurt us was, coupled with the loss of Deangelo Alexander the previous year, also a tough year, Kelvin was starting to wonder if he wasn't going about things the wrong way. For anybody who is asked to be a leader of young people, this is a common question; but it can also be a question that can debilitate your thought process if you allow it to.
- No glue. We lost Gilbert. He (more-or-less single-handedly) held together than 2005 team. With his loss, the 2006 team suffered from a lack of toughness and featured two guys who thought that they were auditioning for the NBA (Everett and Gray) and possibly the most skilled of them all, and the hardest worker on the team, frustrated to death by the entire situation, and concentrating on other arenas again. (Bookout)
- The closest thing that we had to a true point guard was Austin Johnson, a true freshman who played the 2 in high school. Then we had Everett. He had the best handle of anybody on the team. Sadly, he also felt like he had to show that at every available opportunity. Our two best players were post players, and we had Terrell "Maybe the Bobcats Will Love Me" Everett jacking up shots to the tune of a 5.1 percent drop in his overall FG%, and a 5.8% drop in his 3pt%. (He also shot 2, and 1.5 more shots per game in those categories, respectively.) In addition, he averaged a full 1.3 TO's per game more, despite playing in all of the games from the year before, and starting in all but one. He wasn't "learning the game" at that point. What he was doing was trying to show that he was a "balla."

So, between the losses of personnel, and the losses on the court, and also, Kelvin's personal losses off of the court, which should NEVER be discounted, things weren't terribly easy for Kelvin during the era ending in the 2006 season. Back-to-back years of Hell. How many of you have gone through that at a job? Did you start questioning yourself? Did you start wondering what you needed to do differently to make things work again; to make them "right" again?

Kelvin knew. He needed to WIN. And, in order to win at the college level, you need excellent coaching (check) and skilled players (not so fast there, check mark guy...) teaching and learning in state-of-the-art facilities.

But, in his (I'm back to that word from the beginning now... this is what's known as closure; or, coming full circle, if you prefer that particular idiom...) frustration, he forgot about WHO he was, and what had gotten him to where he was.

- And he cheated. There. I said it. He knew the rules and he didn't follow them. It led to his departure from OU for Indiana. It led to his termination from Indiana. But, honestly, that's not the guy that we hired, and that's not the guy that I remember from all of the dealings that I had with him. To me, he's still the all-time winningest coach in OU history, and the coach with the best record in the conference tournament too.

...and I feel like he deserves a little more respect than he tends to get for what he accomplished while he was here at OU. A lot of you that weren't fans until Stoops got hired as the football coach may not remember the John Blake years, but I do. I also remember still giving a sh*t about OU athletics, 1) because that's what I do, but 2) because of Kelvin Sampson, and the way he coached and his teams played. He came to a football school, and, at least for a few years, turned it into a basketball school, with a little help from a head coach who thought that changing not only trigger men, but entire guns, during a game would be a good idea.

If that, and my feelings regarding Kelvin Sampson puts me in the minority... well, so does my I.Q. I'll manage.

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If you read all of this, thanks for your time. If you didn't, keep on chanting your clever variation of "fire Kelvin Sampson," or "screw Kelvin Sampson" every time the opportunity for you to try to forget his legacy presents itself. It'll be easier for me to spot you that way.

the_ouskull
Click to expand...

So here was a coach with countless problems and rogue players trying to be successful at a football school? Fine. What about Indiana? was he just a victim of unfortunate circumstances there too? Was it really so hard to get players at IU that he had to resort to the same exact cheating that got him in trouble at OU?

Please, enough of the "Kelvin the victim"

the_ouskull · Jan 22, 2009

Which is exactly what I'm NOT doing. (Talk about reading to your agenda...) I'm simply trying to understand things. This thread has been cathartic. Welcome to it.

the_ouskull

oumartin · Jan 22, 2009

Kelvin sucks

the_ouskull · Jan 24, 2009

Well, with such an eloquent, well-thought-out analysis of your obviously unbiased and educated opinion regarding the topic at hand, I congratulate you on typing some big boy words on your magic internet box, and can only vehemently encourage you to go f*ck yourself.

____ sucks is quite the aggie argument you have there, Martin. Care to state your position with a little less orange tint to it? I'd looooooooove to hear what you have to say outside of the plebian responses to which I've been treated to date.

Hollah, as they say...

the_ouskull

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My thoughts on Kelvin Sampson...

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My thoughts on Kelvin Sampson...

Crimsontothecore New Member

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