I (Don't) Wanna Talk to Sampson!

Next season will be the 20th year since Indiana’s last national basketball championship. It’s going to be about 20 more before they get another because, after the hiring of Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, the Hoosiers have purchased a first-class ticket to mediocrity.
How on earth did Indiana decide on a tired, no-talent clown like Sampson when the coaching ranks are filled with either guys on-the-rise (Bruce Pearl, Jim Larranaga), major-conference stalwarts (John Beilein, Tom Crean) or former Dukies with wonderful hair (Quin Snyder)? Hiring Sampson after Mike Davis is like trading in a Geo Prism for a Hyundai Elantra.
Sampson has no upside. He has no potential. He’s climbed his own Everest (reaching a Final Four in 2002) and then fell-off it (one Tourney win in the past three seasons). Sampson has no redeeming qualities at all. He’s not young, he’s not talented, he’s not good and he’s already maxed-out his talent level. What the hell were they thinking?
Sampson’s eternal crappiness is made even more remarkable by the fact that he’s a pedestrian coach who can’t win even though he’s a dirty cheat. Sampson bolted OU with the program under investigation for alleged offenses that occurred under his watch. That Oklahoma can’t even have success while cheating says more about Sampson than any criticism I can come up with. I mean, say what you want about Jim Calhoun, but at least the man gets results from his blatant disregard for the rules.
Why would IU hire a coach whose ceiling is waist-high? Did they really want to distance themselves from Bobby Knight that much? It’s almost like this was an F-U to the legions who still expect The General to walk through the doors. "You want to force out Mike Davis? Well here's Mike Davis in 15 years!"
I also can’t help but think that the Sampson hiring came, at least in part, because of fear of the backlash that would come from hiring a white coach after canning a black coach who did a decent job (a la Notre Dame football). Of course, just because Scoop Jackson gets upset about the Irish’s Willingham-fiasco doesn’t mean everybody agrees with him. Scoop thinks black holes demonstrate how racist the astronomy community is.
But if that was the case, surely there were better black coaches who have never played under, coached for, or heard of Bobby Knight.
ESPN.com’s Jason Whitlock wrote a nonsensical column about why the Sampson hiring was great for Indiana. Almost every paragraph contained a “you get paid to write?!” moment. Some examples:

Whitlock: Sampson is as good as it gets. The winningest coach in the history of the Big 12 conference won 20 games nine straight years, advanced to the Elite Eight twice and one Final Four despite coaching just one NBA player.
Chase: The Big 12 began in 1995, doofus. Sampson is the winningest coach because he’s the only coach in the league who’s been there that long. Roy Williams left two years ago, Rick Barnes got there seven years ago, Eddie Sutton is a drunk and Baylor’s coach took part in a murder cover-up. If that’s the best compliment you can give Sampson, that’s a problem.
As for the making a Final Four: So did Mike Davis! And he actually won a game, unlike Sampson. The “coaching just one NBA player” thing is just as ridiculous. Coach K has coached zero NBA players and has three national titles!

Whitlock: Under Sampson, the Sooners always overachieved in conference play by giving a superior, more consistent effort than their opponents. OU's NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable. Sampson never really had the horses, and his teams were generally worn out in March because they'd played harder for longer than just about every team in the country.
Chase: Maybe the Sooners wouldn’t be so tired if Sampson would give his players some rest. And who says they overachieved in conference play? Oklahoma only has one Big 12 regular season win and zero Tournament titles. If that’s overachieving I (and Indiana) shudder to think of what regular, old achieving will be like.
I love the “OU’s NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable,” line too. Of course they were. Their coach is Kelvin Freakin’ Sampson!

Whitlock: Give Sampson a lottery pick -- let alone the all-star squad Williams had at UNC -- and he'll have no trouble winning in March.
Chase: Give him a lottery pick? What, this is a charity Whitlock is running? And what about Hollis Price and Kevin Bookout? Those guys were great JUCO and high-school players, respectively. Forget that Sampson probably committed major violations to get these players, but at least he got 'em! Sampson also had a McDonald’s All-American signed up for this year. (Maybe he got all those phone calls.) Sampson couldn’t win the WNBA title if he had the Spurs and LeBron. Giving him Marvin Williams would just have cost Marvin Williams a few million on draft night.

Whitlock: Translation: Kelvin Sampson is best appreciated up close. You can't fully appreciate him from a distance.
Chase: So he’s sort of like Van Gogh in that way, I suppose. Well, I’d cut my ear off too if I had to “appreciate” Kelvin Sampson from up close.

Unlike Whitlock, I have some stats at my disposal to prove my point. Below is OU’s Tournament history since Sampson arrived:

2006 - #6 lost 1st round #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
2005 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Utah
2004 – No Tournament
2003 – #1 lost Elite Eight to #3 Syracuse
2002 – #2 lost Final Four to #5 Indiana
2001 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Indiana State
2000 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Purdue
1999 - #13 lost Elite Eight
1998 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Indiana in first round
1997 - #11 lost 1st round to #6 Stanford
1996 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Temple
1995 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Manhattan

That’s six straight Tournaments where Sampson has lost to lower-seeded teams. Hmm, Whitlock was right. I did need to get closer up before I could fully appreciate Kelvin!
The ’02 Final Four was an aberration (much like Lute Olsen’s National Championship), but can be explained by the easy-road OU took to get there. They beat a #15, #7, #4 and #12 seed to reach Atlanta. Not exactly George Mason-esque.
The following year, OU got to the Elite Eight as a #1 seed, but that road was even smoother, as they had to beat #16, #8 and #12, before losing to the first equally-matched team they saw.
Sampson supporters will point to 1999 when the Sooners made a surprising run to the Elite Eight as a #13 seed. (First thing, it's never good when supporters can point to one of ten seasons, but I digress.) Sampson rippers will say the Sooners underachieved all season (hear that Jason Whitlock?) and should have been a #5 seed in the Tournament if not for a terrible run in conference play. Anytime a major-conference team with a low-seed makes a run in the Tournament (see: Missouri), it’s usually because they finally play up to their abilities in March after a wasteful season.
At the beginning of his ode to Kelvin, Whitlock ran a quote from former Hoosier star Ted Kitchel: "[Hiring Sampson] is an absolute disgrace. I wouldn't hire that guy to coach my fifth-grade girls team. That guy is absolutely what we don't want at IU."
Kitchel was, of course, incorrect. I’d hire Sampson to coach a fifth-grade girls team any day. As long “any day” refers to a day when said fifth-grade girls team was playing a group of blind, wheelchair-ridden nuns. But even then, I’d have to think about it.

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