On how he compares playing Houston to Arizona State:
“I’ve thought about that a lot. These guys [UH] are probably just more complete in terms of perimeter scoring. Obviously, Arizona State’s really, really good. They’re ranked No. 18 even though they lost last night to Vanderbilt. These guys just have more guys that are consistent threats, and their big guys are better scorers. They’re more complete that way. Defensively, Houston’s more sound. They’re 15th in the country where Arizona State was more fly at you and they’re just going to come at you in waves, where these guys are just more positioned, they don’t make many mistakes, all five of their guys can really defend and they really work well together. Houston’s just more complete if that makes sense. With Arizona State, we were there to the wire, we just didn’t have an answer for their NBA player. At the end of the day, that’s what it was.”
They have a $60 million renovation. They opened their arena four games ago against Oregon, and beat them as well. They have a lot of weapons. They have a veteran point guard who’s a very, very good player in Galen Robinson Jr. He’s played a lot of minutes in his career and he really makes plays for a lot of people. (Armoni) Brooks and (Corey) Davis Jr. are two high-level scorers at the two and the three. They account for 42 percent of their scoring and 44 percent of their team’s field goals. They’ll let it fly from anywhere at anytime. Their bigs guys are guys that can score in the paint. Their four can shoot it some, but they’re high, high motor guys. They’re an electric rebounding team that way. They’re going to get out and run and really push the pace on misses. On makes, they’re going to come down and run a set basically every time. We’re going to have to defend their sets and defend the screen-and-roll for 40 minutes against those guys. Then, just like us, they’re a very good defensive team. They’re going to get into you. We’re going to have to tighten up on offense and not have some of those careless turnovers like we had a little bit against Weber State and, certainly, against Alabama State. They have the second-longest home winning streak in the country. But, it will be a fantastic test. This is a game that we scheduled when we got hired just from the standpoint of one, we knew they’d be very good and it’s important to play very good competition. Two, Quinn Taylor is from Houston, Texas, and it’s always been important, to me, to be able to go home where our guys are from and to be able to play in front of their parents. This was a great opportunity for us to do that. Three, we recruit Texas very hard, so actions speak louder than words. Last year at South Dakota, we played TCU at their place and had a chance to tie it with 13 seconds to go, we just missed a shot. So, hopefully, we come out and play well. But, they have a veteran group and a very dynamic group, so I know our guys are excited for the challenge."