It’s hard to contextualize the game we saw last night. The Cougars led for over 80% of the game and it was really never in doubt. But still, it was a strange one.
Flipped: Besides Grimes and Harris, the team shot 3/17 (.176) in the first half but the entire team was solid from the FT line (12/15).
Besides Grimes, the team shot 12/27 (.444) from the floor in the second half but just 5/13 (.384) from the line. In that half, Hinton missed both of his FT attempts, Jarreau went 5/9, and White and Mills both missed their only attempt.
The Coogs were 2/10 from three-point range in the second half and were outrebounded by 10 (28-18).
Maybe the problem is focus, maybe its the travel, and maybe it’s’ that they are in the dog days of conference play. I suspect they’ll be dialed-in Saturday evening at Fifth Third Arena.
Streaking:The Cougars have won 9-straight against ECU but last night was the closest of the last 7 meetings.
Identical: The Cougars went 7-1 in January – the same record they had in December.
Hold ‘Em Low: ECU was the 69th time a Kelvin Sampson team has allowed under 60 points at UH. The Coogs are 64-5 in those games (.928). After holding the Pirates to 32.8%, Houston is 45-1 under Sampson when a team shoots under 35% (.978).
Scheduling: Thanks to private flights, the Cougars flew home from ECU last night and will practice today around 3 p.m. Then it’s back on a bus to the airport Friday morning at 10:15.
The Cougars have left on road trips at 10:15 the day before a game through most of the year. Whereas most football coaches try to get to a visiting city 24 hours before kickoff, Sampson prefers to keep his travel day more standardized. There’s some logic to that.
3 D: Remember earlier this year when Rice shot 42% from three or when Oregon shot 48%? Boy, those were the days.
USF hit less than 19% (3/16) on Sunday and ECU just shot 17.4% (4/23) Wednesday night. That’s the lowest 3-pt shooting game against UH since Memphis went an identical 4/23 in the AAC Tournament last year.
In this 5-game winning streak, each opponent has been under 28% from three. Combined, they’ve shot 24/105 (.229) from beyond.
In the first 16 games of the season, UH held an opponent to 25% or less from 3-pt just four times. Now, it’s happened in four of the last 5 games.
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