The Houston Cougars will take on the Idaho Vandals in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament with head coach Kelvin Sampson still looking for his first national championship. While he has come extremely close on multiple occasions, as recently as 2025, Idaho head coach Alex Pribble still sees Sampson as a Hall of Fame coach, per a post on X by Joseph Duarte.

“He’s a Hall of Fame coach,” Pribble said, and it is hard to argue against him.

At 70 years old and in his 46th year in coaching, Sampson has compiled an 825-362 career record, including a dominant 327-90 record with the Cougars. Houston has now reached eight consecutive NCAA Tournaments, advancing to at least the Sweet 16 in each of the last five seasons, including a Final Four run in 2021 and a national championship appearance in 2025.

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Further, Houston has entered March Madness as a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in five of the last six tournaments while boasting a 45-31 all-time NCAA Tournament record overall. Sampson himself has a 31-21 NCAA Tournament record and has reached the Final Four four times, once with the Oklahoma Sooners in 2002 and three times with Houston.

At Oklahoma, he led the Sooners to 12 straight postseason appearances, including a 2002 Final Four run. At Houston, he inherited a program coming off years of inconsistency, including just two tournament appearances between 1990 and 2010. Since then, he has turned them into perennial contenders.

Sampson has previously had stints as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Houston Rockets, returning to college basketball with Houston back in 2014. While he continues to search for his first national title, the Cougars are once again seen as huge favorites and a huge chunk of the credit undoubtedly goes to their vastly experienced head coach. Whether he has already achieved HOF status remains to be seen, although Pribble certainly believes so.