Last year, it was the first win in 40+ years against Cincinnati.
This year, it was the first ever win against Memphis at the Fed Ex Forum. They moved into that building 13 years ago.
The man is doing stuff at UH that hasn’t been done in a very long time.
Best coach we’ve had since Foster
Better than Penders ?! 
Penders took us to the NCAA tournament & NIT numerous times. UH beat several rank foes under Penders with lesser talent.
You’re right, at this point his resume isn’t better than Penders.
I hope we don’t run him off like we did Penders
Sampson is 23-11 in league play the last two years. Only Cincy and SMU have more wins.
Compare UConn, Temple and Tulsa at 20 wins and 14 losses. Memphis at 16 wins and 18 losses.
We are the 3rd best program in the league now.
Pomeroy currently ranks UH 38th. Penders never had us anywhere near that high.
That said, Penders got paid a lot less. Had a worse TV deal to recruit to. And did not have the new $25M development facility. He squeezed blood out of a turnip here.
You just made my case as far as coaching goes. Penders did one hell of a coaching job with the limited resources, and with the old administration UH had.
Don’t get me wrong, CKS has done one heck of a job; but let’s see if he could get this team into the NCAA tournament before we declared him the best since Foster if we’re just talking about coaching.
I have to disagree @Progs. Penders never had a team that showed this type of improvement in a season. His NCAA tournament team got hot during the conference tournament after having a very mediocre season. Sampson would coach circles around Penders easily.
We agree to disagree…there is no right answer. To each it’s own. Just like Patrick said, CKS has to get UH into the tournament for the resume to match up if not pass coach Penders. I remember when coach Penders beat a highly rank Arizona team & LSU with in weeks. He also brought the program back from the dead grips of coach McCullum.
Sampson is the better X’s and O’s coach out of the two, but Penders knew how to get his teams to win. I did love the red jacket that Penders used to wear. See you for one more at Hofheinz on Sunday! Go Coogs!
With an overall record of at least 23 wins, we have a good chance of making it to the tournament.
I think we need to make it to the final of our conference tournament to better our chances.
That was a very good road win.
I had 2 major complaints about Penders. First, it was like he refused to recruit the Houston area. I’m all for branching outside the Houston area for recruits, but to ignore Houston like he did was ridiculous. Second, it seemed like we never ran an offense. It really didn’t take much for other teams to figure us out. In fact, if it weren’t for Aubrey Coleman, we wouldn’t have sniffed the tourney that final year.
All that said, he was obviously so much better than McCallum and Drexler that it’s hard to complain too much. But my vote goes to Sampson for being the better of the two.
Foster might be a bit overrated as well. We were used to making serious runs in the Tourney. Foster’s goal seemed to be to get to 20 wins and go home. And He won 20+ only 3 of 7 years. In tournament play he was basically one and done. Big deal. Plus he brought in a few ranked players, but overall we had a bit if a talent drain while Penders had UT on a roll. Then, just look at what he didn’t do at Nevada.
Coach Penders did tried to recruit in the Houston area ; according to his book, many of the top area kids pimps wanted a hand out…(Deandre Jordan)
I’m certain that’s true, but D1 caliber basketball players in Houston are just about as plentiful as D1 caliber football players. There should not have been a single year pass where we didn’t have at least one Houston Yates player on our roster. It could have been a bench player for all I cared. Gotta start somewhere with local recruits and it doesn’t have to be the blue chippers like Deandre Jordan.
Maybe he did tried, just like CKS has tried bringing in a true Center with no results.
It was AAU coaches.
The thing I hate about these conversations is you have to put a few coaches down in order to argue that one coach is better.
I like Tom. I wanted him to do well here. The resume is short on Sampson, but I feel very confident that he will prove to be a better coach at UH that Penders was. Sure, you can point to facilities, salary, department support, etc. you can also argue about C-USA vs. American. But in the end, Sampson had a better “gross” resume than Penders did in their pre-UH stops. Subtract Sampson’s NCAA violation history and maybe they break even, or Penders ends up better in that regard.
Why do we even need to talk about it. We just end up bringing demons out of people’s closets.
Sampson had us 0.406 in yr 1; 0.688 in yr 2 and currently has us at 0.714. Penders best year had us at 0.706 in yr 4 and took us 2-1 in the CBI.
There isn’t another coach in the country that wants this job, that I’d rather have. And I was a huge Gillespie fan…glad I didn’t get my way there.
Yeah, Brad. I thought the NCAA was hard on Sampson whenever they put sanctions & penalties on Indiana under his watch, but I’m just talking about his time at UH. I believe that UH had to make sure CKS was allowed to coach in college again. That’s why he left to the NBA (San Antonio, Rockets)
Well, that’s part of being a fan. Fans talk. About all kinds of things. I don’t always agree, and sometimes I really disagree. I can’t stand sports talk on radio. That’s where it really gets insane. But all in all I think those who post here are are just trying to sort things out.
And I was a BIG Penders fan. That guy did us a big just lending his name to the program. I mean we were at rock bottom when he came here. The rest is history.
©Copyright 2017 Coogfans.com