In the first half of the Cincy game was some of the best basketball I’ve seen a Houston team play ever. I don’t know if we lost focus in the second half or Cincy got a late wakeup call. Yes, they played more zone, but we’ve played against zone defense before. The 2 freshmen played a lot but were making shots in the first half but not as much the 2nd. Where did they go? We were craving the boards and getting rebounds the first half, but were not as successful in the 2nd.
Pregame I noted that Cincy has 1 elite defender…I noted the key to the game was attacking with whoever wasn’t on Keith Williams
We did a really good job of that the 1st half (more specifically Dejon and sasser)
The end of the second half was trying to iso on kieth Williams and he owned us…mills hit like 1 of 6 attempts on him late … and he had the grimes steal/dunk… (he was also the one that stole the ball from Dejon that led to the tech)
Dejon was the key to that game, with how he was moving the ball… we were up huge with him in, we lost the big lead with him on the bench…and he was ejected shortly after being put back in… he did a great job of attacking and Williams wasn’t on him, he was blowing by his defender, he’d draw help defense and then pass to the open man…
The end of the game it was “who could beat kieth Williams” in 1 on 1 basketball and it did not turn out great for us
The other 4 perimeter defenders for them; the Cumberland cousins (average defenders, nothing special) and 2 true freshman… we should have had an advantage there
Not sure what you meant? But I M saying that the reason for our collapse in the second half of the Cincinnati game was because one of our players bit someone.
Mills is a scorer and has not developed (as of yet) as a passer. Problem in this game regarding Mills is that he played only 24 minutes, but took 30% of all of UH’s field goal attempts.
Clearly, the coaches have got to insist that other’s step up…Fabian and Grimes, I’m talking to you.
Clearly, our offense functions better when DeJon is running the show.
We lost bc that’s what young inexperienced teams do on the road after their floor general gets ejected for putting his mouth on another player’s upper thigh at a crucial point in the game with cameras and millions of people watching. That didn’t even look like he got a good piece of the guy. Couldn’t have been worth it!
Just bizarre…
I would have liked to see Nate close that game out as the veteran on the floor who was shooting the ball well.
If you live by underclass men it will eventually catch up with you.
We looked great the first half though! Had me about ready to guarantee an elite 8 appearance.
I really am starting to have a problem with Grimes. Did he really think he had a shot at the NBA and this is what he has shown us? Seriously, he needs to get his attention on basketball or just be a so-so player who never really wanted to be as good as he could be. Now it’s really up to him. Come on Grimes show us the 5-star you!!
Something else I’ll add too since I was there. The Cincy crowd roared every time we brought the ball down, even when they were down by double digits. They were very loud. Half of schools in the major 7 couldn’t touch that environment. Keep in mind too Cincy is a bubble team right now, it was a very impressive crowd. CKS touched on it in the coaches show we won’t get another hostile crowd like that for a while, maybe Memphis. No way that didn’t affect our young team.
When you are ranked, teams up their game. It is tough to win in this league especially on
the road. They got some calls their way, but they played harder than us down the stretch.
In the tourny I think we take them, but there are several teams that are hot and can win the AAC.