Houston vs. St. Louis - Saturday at 7 pm (W 77-58)

Sampson after the game:

  • Choppy game
  • Great to hold a team to 36% shooting on their court
  • Too many mindless turnovers
  • Need to see passing lanes better, focusing on defense too much
  • Good free throw shooting
  • LSU really talented. Beat Michigan who beat UCLA today
  • LSU has a lot of length that could cause problems
  • Come home tonight, practice Monday, head to Baton Rouge Tuesday, game Wednesday
  • Hard game to decipher, doesn’t want to get fined when it comes to the refs

Gray after the game:

  • Football game today
  • Have to be tougher than the other team. Practice harder than every other team in their minds
  • 19 point win in these conditions shows the potential of this team
  • Too many turnovers or they could have won by 30 points
  • Lot of fouls and a lot of non-calls
  • Came out with a bit of “deer in the headlights,” but put it together
  • Proud of Brady. Think he’s really carving out a niche
  • Remembers Everything about the game against LSU last year and they need to go in there and play tough to get the win. Got to control the boards like they did tonight (+13)
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Really nice win. It must be hard to watch that A10 style of play every night. Charles Oakley or Bill Laimbeer would be good coaches for this league. Very impressed with the poise of the team. Hurt them where it counts. On the scoreboard. Great offensive rebounding our post game is light years ahead of any Sampson team we’ve had. Makes it easier when the shots aren’t falling.

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Coach Sampson didn’t lose his tie and didn’t draw a technical foul, even after going all the way out into the lane when the 2 guys were ejected from the game. I don’t think he cared too much for the refereeing in this game.

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Nice to see multiple guys contribute and guys making some moves to get their shot off. If the big guys can get a shot off in the paint. We should be dangerous.

So I traveled up to the Gateway of the West for this one. The arena is near one of the nicer areas in St Louis City for food and booze, so that was cool. Their arena is really aesthetically pleasing, good sight lines and not many bad seats in the house. We sat essentially facing the UH bench on the other side of the arena and we were right on top of the “skirmish”.in the 2nd half. Here’s my general thoughts:

  • SLU was an extremely physical and well-drilled defensive team. They were determined to slow this game down as much as humanly possible. They were very uncomfortable playing the kind of running/up and down game the Coogs want to play (kind of the polar opposite of Arkansas last Saturday for example)\

  • I watched the entire kerfuffle that led to Corey Davis and Hasahn French being ejected. I am not sure I even heard hard profanity, much less anything worthy of ejecting them. This officiating crew was the worst I’ve seen this year. 51 fouls total kinda says it all and yet they allowed some of the most brutal contact whenever SLU pressed.

  • The SLU fans HATED Rob and it was glorious. He plays the villain so well and I think good teams need a guy who’s gonna get under the opponents’ skin like Rob does. He definitely had a slow start to the 1st half, but thankfully Devin Davis and his teammates picked him up. Then in the 2nd half Rob took over a bit more, which was also good to see. Rob is so much more unselfish and involved in the team concept, and it shows with how everyone else plays.

  • What this year’s bigs (+a healthy Devin Davis) bring to the table continues to be night and day over the previous couple years. Devin had kind of a slow start to the season and looks so much more comfortable out there. His mid range jumper is really a game changer. Breaon Brady is also becoming more assertive and I don’t think it’s just the weaker competition causing this team to be seriously out rebounding opponents.

  • Free throw shooting is so mental and this team is back over 70% for the season after starting abysmally from the charity stripe. That’ll be important in the big picture, obviously and they were asked to shoot a lot of free throws tonight and made most of them.

  • Scoring 77 points and comfortably beating a SLU team that did just about everything possible to grind this game to a halt was impressive. We didn’t even play close to our best offensive game and still won easily. This team loves playing together and even the insane ejection kind of illustrated that, as Corey felt like French and his teammates were taking cheap shots. I absolutely love watching them and I hope people are busily jumping on the bandwagon. LSU will be reeeeeally interesting.

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Here is a link to watch the full game,

https://watchstadium.com/live/houston-at-slu/

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https://twitter.com/RickyRick_Photo/status/939711732431360000

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https://twitter.com/SHPawdcast/status/939700147545624576

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https://twitter.com/UHCougarMBK/status/939707672865263617

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https://twitter.com/CoreyTheGreat_/status/939709030091632640

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Anyone know why Chris Harris didn’t play ?

Hard game to watch but the Coogs fought through it. Beat LSU and go Coogs.

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I think he had a foot injury earlier in the season? Coach will slowly get him back in the rotation.

According to the Houston Chronicle, this game never happened. - No story. Not even a score. I guess they were to busy writing about what the new Aggie coach was doing, UT women’s basketball, and the Texans, and the Texans, and the Texans, …

This game will hopefully benefit us when we play Cincinnati.

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Now you know why Coach Whitting got upset with Duarte during the baseball season last year. Not really Duarte’s fault as he can only cover what the Chronicle tells him to, but the paper’s coverage of UH sports is ridiculously lacking.

Not surprising, though. I had a conversation with one of their editors recently and he said that they want to be a “Texas paper.” My response was that they need to change their name to the “Texas Chronicle” then.

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Why? Is someone in Dallas subscribed to Houston’s newspaper??

That’s what I was told. They want to compete with the Statesman and the Dallas Morning News which is stupid considering those two spend more on employees and focus on local coverage more than the Chronicle spends on covering Houston.

Problem with no real competition, owners based out of New York, and a large portion of their leadership that got degrees from that Austin school.

I really miss the Houston Post. At least the Comical had competition.

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Don’t worry; the Comical is on the way OUT. A couple more shrinkages, and it will be the size of a postage stamp - and then, “poof” - it will be gone!