BUTTE — Kelvin Sampson will have a full-circle moment at the end of August.
The head men's basketball coach at the University of Houston began his storied career at Montana Tech in 1980, first as an assistant and then as head coach from 1981-85 before embarking on a decades long run with stops in the NBA and most recently guide the Cougars to the 2025 national championship game.
He'll be back in Butte at the end of the month, running a youth basketball camp in Tech's HPER Complex on the floor that now bears his name. The camp is set to be held on Saturday, Aug. 29 from 9 a.m. to noon.
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"What a unique experience for a lot of these kids in the area," said current Tech head men's basketball coach Adam Hiatt. "We have people from all over the state coming in for this. It's going to be an awesome morning. But for (Sampson) to be able to coach on the floor that carries his namesake is going to be a special treat for him and for all of us to be able to share the floor with him.
"What makes this weekend really awesome is it kind of bookends his career. He started his career at Montana Tech, he's kind of at the tail end of his career. He's going to have one big flourish at the end of August to give back to where he started. So we want to try to involve as many people as possible with this weekend."
After engineering a remarkable turnaround at Montana Tech, lifting the program from an initial 0-15 conference season to three consecutive Frontier Conference titles, Sampson went on to build a powerhouse resume across the highest levels of basketball.
He orchestrated impressive rebuilds at Washington State and Oklahoma, leading the Sooners to the 2002 Final Four and racking up multiple national coach of the year honors. He later had a multi-year stint as an assistant in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and Houston Rockets.
Sampson's career peak, however, has come at Houston. Since taking over in 2014, Sampson has transformed the Cougars into an national powerhouse, culminating in a run to the 2025 national championship game.
Along the way, he became just the 17th coach in Division I history to eclipse 800 career wins and was named a finalist for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
