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Even though the Cougars went 8-10 in Pac-10 conference games in 1991, Sampson was the league’s Coach of the Year, out-polling heavyweights Lute Olson, Mike Montgomery and Jim Harrick.

I phoned Sampson a few days before the ’91 Arizona-WSU game at McKale and he spoke with a sense of dread. His Cougars had lost in Tucson by scores of 89-55, 76-59 and 81-61. He knew the drill.

“Losing feels worse than winning feels good," he told me that day, adding with a touch of exaggeration that “I would like to score more than 50 points down there some day."

He then referred me to his father, Ned Sampson, a Hall of Fame high school basketball coach in Pembroke, N.C. I recently looked up the column I wrote that day and had a good laugh.

Ned Sampson told me he and his wife recommended that Kelvin become a dentist, and not follow his fathers footsteps. He said that for a while, Kelvin even hoped to go to law school at Wake Forest.

Instead, Sampson became a doctor of defense, perhaps the best in college hoops.

Sampson has produced successive full-season records of 32-5, 33-4, 32-6, 28-4 and 33-4 at Houston, better than any stretch of the many elite seasons in Arizona history. His Cougars outplayed Arizona in the final five minutes Saturday at McKale, winning 62-58, and I couldn’t help but smile while remembering Sampson’s ironic, long-ago wish that he could “score more than 50 points down there some day."

From 1987-2008, Arizona never scored below 60 points at McKale Center, never, not in more than 350 games. But on Saturday the Wildcats got stuck in the 50s after taking a 48-41 lead.

You could almost sense it coming.

The Cougars lead the nation in scoring defense (57.3 per game), the key part of Sampson's strategic DNA in which Houston seems to shrink the court, forcing air balls, rushed shots, deflections, steals, loose balls, with few open looks and almost no layups.

This was no surprise. Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd wrote a message to the Wildcats on the team’s locker room blackboard before the game that said “Two Dogs, One Bone."

And although Arizona played one of its most dogged, resolute and tenacious games of the season, Sampson’s Cougars got the bone.