Houston's Kelvin Sampson on 'Horns Down': Texas should take it as a compliment

UCF players flashed ‘Horns Down’ following a win over Texas earlier this week, doing a gesture that Longhorns coach Rodney Terry referred to as “classless” following the game. It’s safe to say Houston coach Kelvin Sampson doesn’t see it that way.

Sampson said during a press conference on Friday that the Longhorns should see ‘Horns Down’ as a compliment.

“In an indirect way, the University of Texas should actually take is as a compliment, because they have such a great athletic department,” Kelvin Sampson said, according to Joseph Duarte. “You’ve got to be really, really good for people to hate you.”

Sampson also pointed out that part of the Texas fight song takes a shot at its rival — Oklahoma.

“University of Texas has ‘OU sucks’ in their fight song for God’s sake,” Sampson said, according to Duarte. “I think OU is the one that started the Horns down.”

Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars are ranked in the top 5 and hold a 15-2 record near the halfway point of the season. Houston dropped back-to-back close games against Iowa State and TCU recently, before rebounding to beat Texas Tech on Wednesday.

Things aren’t going as well for Texas. Rodney Terry and the Longhorns are 12-5 but have dropped three of their past four games. That could have led to Terry making comments while frustrated following the loss to UCF.

Rodney Terry explains anger in UCF handshake line: Horns Down ‘looks very classless’

UCF outlasted Texas 77-71 in the Moody Center on Wednesday night, overcoming a 16-point deficit to hand the Longhorns its second-straight loss.

In the postgame handshake line, Longhorns head coach Rodney Terry took exception to a few UCF players that celebrated the win with ‘Horns Down.’ He gave the Knights roster a piece of his mind, calling their actions classless while shaking their hands.

“We don’t do that because when you do those kinds of things, it looks very classless and it also looks like you would just hoping to win,” Terry said. We never go into games trying to hope to win. We go into games expecting to win. So we don’t act like that. We expect to win, we don’t jump up and down like we won a national championship.

“We don’t step on anyone’s home court deal in that crazy trying to show them up in any way. We don’t do that. So that’s what I was angry about.”