SAN ANTONIO — Kelvin Sampson reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, scrolling through more than 400 congratulatory texts.

He took a few minutes to wade through all of the well-wishes, then when he came across the message from longtime Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, Sampson’s voice choked with emotion.

“I’m the happiest person in San Antonio today,” Popovich wrote after Houston beat Tennessee in the Elite Eight to send Sampson to his second Final Four with the Cougars. “But not as happy as you, Karen and the family and your whole program built with grit, character and love. Bravo, my good friend.”

The five-time NBA champion told Sampson to enjoy the Final Four bid with a “good red” wine — wishes for a celebratory toast ring loud when they come from the same man who threw Sampson a career lifeline when he needed it most.

Shortly after Sampson resigned from Indiana amid intense scrutiny of NCAA violations in February 2008, Popovich invited him to join his coaching staff. Now, 17 years later, Sampson returns to San Antonio atop the profession, adding a third Final Four to his Hall of Fame résumé.

“He did,” Karen Sampson, Kelvin’s wife, said when asked if Popovich saved her husband’s career. “He called when a lot of people weren’t calling and said, ‘Get here as soon as you can.'”

The Sampsons are so appreciative of Popovich, Karen added, that they named a family dog after him: Poppy.

Two decades after Popovich took a strong stance in his corner — which the Cougars coach calls “a blessing” — Sampson has re-emerged atop the sport to lead one of college basketball’s most consistently dominant programs to the national semifinals after reaching its sixth straight Sweet 16, the longest active streak in the country. (And it would be even longer if it hadn’t been for Jordan Poole’s 30-foot buzzer-beater in Michigan’s second-round win over Houston in 2018.)

The start of what Sampson’s daughter, Lauren, calls “The Detour” has come full circle to the city where her father began his climb back — when he has arguably the best chance to win his first national title. And he has done it all his way: surrounded by family, a staff filled with former players and a style (still) built on floor burns.

As the college basketball world has radically changed, Sampson’s evolution has stayed rooted in the familiar.

“There is validation that we’re doing it our way and it works,” said Kellen Sampson, Kelvin’s son and the program’s coach-in-waiting. “Let’s go be great in the new landscape, and let’s do it our way.”

In a giddy coaches’ locker room last Sunday in Indianapolis, Kellen Sampson dribbled a ball and intentionally let it slip away, declaring “loose ball” as his 6-year-old daughter Maisy dove to the floor to secure it.

That scene embodied the biggest theme of Kelvin Sampson’s journey to his third Final Four: blending the old with the new.

Karen Sampson said that she gets floods of game day texts from the former players at Montana Tech, where Sampson started his head-coaching career in 1981, and where his players famously did defensive slides holding bricks.

Some of those players are now grandparents, who look back fondly at the memories of the bus brakes freezing on road trips and pregame meals of Mountain Dew and potato chips.

His gravitational pull keeps people in Sampson’s orbit.