Houston’s win Wednesday night at Tulsa is the school record for the biggest conference road win. There were some discrepancies over what had been the largest road win. We will piece together the behind-the-scenes work to get this figured out.
First, all credit to Jeff Conrad, the UH Assistant AD for Communications (SID for Men’s Basketball) who has been very helpful. While some in his job might say “the records are the records” and move on, he has the desire to find the truth. We appreciate that.
Finding out if a game is the “best ever” or “most ever” requires a lot of digging. Specifically, searching through 77 seasons of 20+ games and not going blind. UH has played over 2250 games since January 1946 and that’s a lot to get through. No simple way to do it.
For this one – what was UH’s largest-ever road win in a conference game – it was pieced together in group fashion. The great Scott and Holman Pawdcast guys started out the search, going back twenty years.
Tonight's 39-point margin of victory by @UHCougarMBK is the largest I can find for a Cougar conference road game going back to the last season KenPom has full game schedules for (2001-02).
— The Sc?tt & H?lman Pawdcast (@SHPawdcast) December 29, 2022
GoCoogs took it from there, believing that Tulsa was the largest conference win ever on the road, although it was late and eyes were tired. We believed that the 39-point margin beat out a 36-point Rice game from the 1970s (and another 36-point win at Rice from 1983 that we missed).
I *believe* this is the largest margin ever for a road conference game in school history.
I *believe* the record was the 36-point win at Rice in 1977. https://t.co/dwuseYmEsl
— GoCoogs.com (@gocoogs1) December 29, 2022
Joseph Duarte confirmed that it was the largest road conference win but based his info off of a Trinity game from the Lone Star Conference in 1947.
Trinity score was 74-41. Media guide is wrong.
— GoCoogs.com (@gocoogs1) December 29, 2022
The UH media guide incorrectly attributed the Trinity score as 74-37. Contemporary stories in newspapers, the AP Wire game scores, and The Houstonian Yearbook all had it correct.
I verified the 1977 and 1983 Rice games before bed and thought we were solid. But Jeff Conrad stayed up til after 3 a.m. working on this issue to be able to definitively state that this was the largest road conference win. He succeeded in that.
The media guide discrepancy came about as files were changed due to technology upgrades at UH. Simple input errors were not found at the time and then became gospel. Jeff wants to begin a scrub of the media guide (we approve!) as this is the second media guide issue in a month, following what we found about Alabama being the first-ever top-10 matchup at UH.
Wednesday night’s Tulsa game ties the fifth-largest winning margin in a road game in program history. It is Houston’s 7th largest margin in any conference game.
Due to Jeff’s late-night work, we now know that the Tulsa win is tied for the 73rd-largest win in school history (all games). All but four of those came at home (one was a neutral game vs. TCU in 1955).
A full 48 of the top 72 biggest wins (all those with a larger margin than Tulsa) happened under Guy V. Lewis (1956-1986). Another 12 have occurred under Kelvin Sampson (2014-present) while the other twelve are spread out: Tom Penders had four while James Dickey and program founder Alden Pasche had three. Pat Foster had two.
UH’s top 100 blowouts of all time, by coach:
Guy V. Lewis – 64
Kelvin Sampson – 20
Alden Pasche – 4
Pat Foster – 4
Tom Penders – 4
James Dickey – 4
