Kelvin Sampson takes heat from all over

You comb the newspaper files, looking for some whiff of a clue to Kelvin Sampson's crimes against common sense.

You find guideposts, but nothing that bangs you over the head like the alleged NCAA violations that seem certain to cost Sampson his job at Indiana. He is accused of breaking phone restrictions stemming from his Oklahoma violations, and of lying to NCAA investigators.

"When you hire sleaze," wrote Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz with brutal candor, "you get covered in the sleaze."

"Sampson appears to have been profoundly arrogant, profoundly ignorant or a little bit of both," wrote Doug Gottlieb of ESPN.com.

Mind if we add massively stupid?

Maybe Sampson was better suited to working for underdog programs — Montana Tech, where he started as a head coach, and Washington State, his next job — than he was a purebred outfit like Indiana. He once told me about working in tobacco warehouses as a kid in his native North Carolina; hot, grubby work that gave him an appreciation for hardscrabble life.

Later, he recalled fondly the daunting drive west in an old beater with his wife Karen to Butte, Mont., where they shared a skimpy, run-down apartment. From a 7-20 start there, he took Montana Tech to three straight 22-win seasons, making long, long bus trips — including one to Alberta where the door came loose and had to be duct-taped and held in place on the ride home.

He worked wonders at Washington State after starting there at the age of 31 in 1987, taking the Cougars to the NCAA tournament in 1994.

There was this: Early in his tenure at WSU, the school reprimanded one of Sampson's assistants for watching a recruit shoot baskets.

And with it, this haunting quote from Sampson: "We've done everything that should be done. We're not going to stoop to cheating."

When he successfully recruited one of the players who began turning around the WSU program, junior college guard Terrance Lewis, Sampson told The Times, "People want to know how we got these kids. Hard work, old-fashioned hard work. We called Terrance Lewis 900 times and wrote him 2,000 letters."

Unfortunately, the rules now don't allow for 900 calls to a recruit. In 1991, NCAA rules began limiting them to one a week. Maybe Sampson, a tireless worker, somehow justified his indiscretions with his passion.

He was a surprise hire at Indiana two years ago, when the Hoosiers couldn't seem to find the right fit. His arrival created a firestorm in that he and his Oklahoma staff were found to have made 577 impermissible phone calls, stirring concern that he might run amok at Indiana, a place that hangs five national title banners and a reputation for doing it cleanly.

Sampson had been a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. When he got whacked for the Oklahoma violations, the NABC reprimanded him and put his membership on probation for three years.

Ted Kitchel can say, "I told you so." Upon the Sampson hire, the Indy Star quoted the ex-Hoosiers forward as saying, "I wouldn't have hired Sampson to coach my fifth-grade girls team."

Somebody else was prescient. Kravitz wrote the other day that Mike Davis, the Bob Knight successor who departed in 2006, told him "Sampson would have IU in hot water within three years."

So he's ahead of schedule. He's been on the job only 23 months. That could end Friday, when an Indiana investigative panel is due to rule on his status.

To be sure, excessive phone calls don't constitute the most grievous NCAA offense in history. So the most numbing aspect of the violations is his stunning lack of recognition of the risk/reward equation.

If there's a prohibition in the bloated NCAA manual for serial idiocy, Sampson is toast. A guy surrounded by a recruiting base of 40 million in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio apparently risked it all for what might have been a negligible edge.

He was probably on the way to the Naismith Hall of Fame. At 52, he has 498 victories, and he and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski are the only coaches to have 20 wins in each of the past 11 seasons.

As a key victory over Purdue wound down the other night, the Indiana crowd serenaded the Boilermakers with the familiar old Steam song: " ... hey, hey, hey, goodbye." The TV camera panned in on Sampson. You couldn't miss the symbolism.

Honey, shut up

Siena (16-9) lost a tough game to Loyola of Maryland the other day, and the Siena coach, Fran McCaffery, was dispensing short answers afterward.

Reporters should have just gone to his wife Margaret. Not that they had to seek her out.

After they assembled in a press room, Margaret McCaffery came in and groused, "Here's your headline: We got hosed!" Then she said of one of the zebras, "Will Bush is a horrendous official."

Enter hubby. Asked about one key play down the stretch, Fran McCaffery said, "I'm not allowed to comment on the officiating."

From the back of the room came this from his wife: "How about that one and every other call?"

Barked Fran McCaffery, "Marg, that's enough."

And what's more ...

On eBay, they're asking for $3,000 and up for courtside seats to the Tennessee-Memphis game Saturday, featuring Nos. 1 and 2.

• Speaking of bad free-throw shooting, Clemson specializes in it. Over the past six seasons, the Tigers' best mark is .657 in 2002-03. And they hit .578 last season.

• The biggest turnaround results in Missouri Valley history happened last year, when Evansville and Missouri State swapped victories, by a composite spread of 59 points. This year? Evansville won by 19, Missouri State by 38 for the second-biggest turnaround.

• One of the reasons Sean Sutton is feeling the heat at Oklahoma State: The second-year coach got the first road victory of his career last week at Texas A&M.

• Twenty-one times in 25 tries, Stanford has held the opponent's top scorer under his average. Arizona State's James Harden and Arizona's Jerryd Bayless, however, each upset the trend last week.

• Notre Dame's 34-game home winning streak deserves some respect. In the past two seasons, the Irish have beaten Marquette (twice), West Virginia (twice), Connecticut, Louisville and Villanova.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com