Stumbled upon your site after our matchup in Ames last week, what an awesome battle that was. I have no connection to Houston’s program but have enjoyed watching the teams Sampson has put together in recent years, in fact I was financially vested in the Cougar’s winning it all last year. The Sasser/Shead combo was awesome to watch.
A few things come to mind after skimming through some of your threads:
Big 12 Conference Record - Being a new program to the conference it may have been a bit of a reality check starting 0-2 in road games, no sweat there at all. As some have mentioned here you are simply going to lose games in this conference; most road games are played with house money where it’s a resume booster if you win but doesn’t hurt with a loss. If the goal is to win the B12 you have to hold serve at home and win half of your road games to be near that position. In the current state of the B12 somewhere between 4-6 losses will likely take the crown, anything less than that would extremely optimistic. For reference Kansas went 13-5 last year and was a 1 seed in March, Texas went 12-6 and earned a 2 seed.
Fouls/Free Throws - Houston plays with the same extreme intensity that Iowa State does on the defensive end, oh boy did we see proof of that in last week’s dog fight. Assuming that style continues, you are likely going to continue having a foul and free throw discrepancy. The refs aren’t giving you the “new guy treatment” - we play similar and had the 3rd most fouls of all P6 teams last year. I would imagine Houston likely got away with that style in the American due to having better athletes in 95% of your matchups but now that the talent level is equal it’s going to result in more fouls. I’m sure Coach Sampson will make some adjustments there.
March Madness - Many existing B12 fans including myself feel Houston is going to benefit greatly from the conference move, Cougars will be 10x battle tested heading into the tournament this year than ever before.
Glad to have your hoops program join the Big 12 and look forward to future battles against our Cyclones. Enjoy the ride to March!
Welcome to the site ClonesFTW. It’s great to be in the Big 12! You make a lot of good points, and I think this conference is only going to get better and tougher over time. It’s like night and day from being in the American. Everyone is going to lose games, and the goal is to improve over the course of the grueling conference schedule and be primed for post-season play.
Welcome and thanks for the post. These are all great points, and if our Doomsday Coogs could read, it would be cool of them to come across this post.
I didn’t know the bit about your fouls last year, makes me feel a tad better about how we are like -26 the past two games.
I usually hop in the Reddit game threads and pretty much every ISU fan I interfaced with was super cool and welcomed us to the league. Glad to be here and I agree we are going to be better for it!
Yup that was a great battle the other night. Game ball certainly goes to #22 for having ice in his veins on that go ahead bucket late but I’d give an assist to the crowd for helping your boys get off to a 14-0 start. Looking forward to rematch in February. Hope to make it out to Ames to catch a game one of these days!
Welcome ClonesFTW! I enjoyed reading all of your points. You reinforced what I was expecting entering this conference. It will be exciting times for Cougar basketball fans.
The Iowa state defense is amazing. Defense in the big 12 is amazing. A lot of the time it is first to 60 wins, which is a different world than the AAC, but it’s been fun.
I so wish we played TCU here later in the season, but we don’t. Maybe in the conference tourney?
No doubt Iowa State and the Frogs are very good teams. I really can’t wait to see how much our Coogs progress before we play IS here at Fertitta…
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