REPORTS: University of Houston Going After Kelvin Sampson

Yahoo Sports is reporting that Houston Rockets' assistant coach Kelvin Sampson is the leading candidate for the recently vacated University of Houston head coaching position.

Sampson has been an NBA assistant since 2008 in Milwaukee and Houston after being forced to leave college basketball to serve a five-year NCAA suspension for violations he committed when he was the coach at Oklahoma and Indiana.

Sampson has the best winning percentage (72.1) in OU basketball history and guided the Sooners to nine-straight 20-win seasons, highlighted by a Final Four in 2002. He left OU in 2006 to become to coach for the Indiana Hoosiers, where he remained for two years before he was forced to resign amidst a whirlwind of allegations that he had committed serious NCAA violations for impermissible phone calls to recruits.

The Houston job opened on Monday when former Oklahoma State assistant and former Texas Tech coach James Dickey resigned for personal reasons.

Yahoo is reporting that Sampson is expected to meet with university officials in the near future.