BUTTE — On Saturday, Houston head men's basketball coach Kelvin Sampson will guide the Cougars in the Final Four against Duke as they look to advance to the national championship for the first time since 1984.
That year, Sampson was a very long way from Texas at a small college in Butte called Montana Tech, where the young head coach was in the midst of transforming a fledgling program into a Frontier Conference juggernaut that won consecutive regular-season titles and strung together a tournament three-peat.
In his five years at the helm of the Orediggers' men's basketball program, Sampson established an expectation of winning that, four decades later, Tech is still embracing, as it recently made league history by claiming four straight regular-season and tournament crowns.
"We refer to him as the godfather of the program," said current Tech head coach Adam Hiatt. "He started the ascension of the program back in the early 80s, he showed what could be. And his culture of toughness and togetherness, it never really left, and he took that everywhere he went from Washington State to Oklahoma to Indiana and now in Houston.
"He's been a winner everywhere. That's what I think of — I think of Montana Tech, I think of being a winner, I think of establishing a culture that we've really done our best to emulate."
Hiatt and Sampson communicate frequently and, back in 2021, the Orediggers got the opportunity to play against Houston at the Fertitta Center in an exhibition game in a season that saw Tech go on to win the Frontier regular-season and tournament titles to set the stage for what's been a dominant stretch for the Orediggers.
"We're gonna get the opportunity to play Houston again in the next year or two, and that's big for us," said Hiatt. "He's never forgotten where he comes from, where he got his start. Every time I see him he always tells me to say hi to everyone in Butte. He loves this community, he follows our program, we follow him. We've learned a lot from what they do and we try to incorporate some of those aspects into our program."
