Houston Cougar Hoops

[doc]

G Caleb Mills, one of the better backcourt players on the Houston team, is transferring. He had only played in 4 games this season. Houston plays Wichita State tonight. Tulane goes to Houston on Saturday.

[PeteRasche]

Rumors are that he's been contacted by the top blue blood programs - UK, UNC, etc. I'm guessing this has been in the works for some time.

[doc]

Houston still has a lot of firepower. Sasser and Grimes are big-time scorers and Jarreau and others can put up double figures. Tulane has a big task ahead on Saturday.

[TUPF]

Tulane MBB at Houston today at 3PM CT/4PM ET on ESPNU. Line says Coogs by 17.5.

[Radio Wave]

A win here would turn some heads.

[TUPF]

A win here would turn some heads.

Especially being down by 12 at the half.

Seriously though, we aren't competitive with Houston so far at least. One player has 20 points at the half.

[Radio Wave]

Heads not turning! It almost like it never will in my lifetime.

[purplehaz3]

Heads not turning! It almost like it never will in my lifetime.

Houston is ranked 11th...what were you expecting?

[waverider]

We hung around in the first half because we made shots and actually looked to play together as a team better than we have all season. Second half we couldn’t throw a beach ball in the ocean.
I don t expect much this season but if we keep the roster mostly intact and add a couple shooters next year we could be pretty good. I also expect to beat some of the other bottom to mid level conference teams this year.

[tjtlja]

I was expecting to be competitive. I thought Houston played poorly. That should have beaten us by at least 30. Looked like they were going through the motions.

We looked awful. So unathletic. So small. No offense. Wholesale changes again after the season. Baseball can’t get here soon enough.

[waverider]

I will add, we have no inside game. Houston figured out early that all they had to do was guard the perimeter and force us into bad shots. Forbes getting into foul trouble early didn’t help either.

[NJwave]

I was expecting to be competitive. I thought Houston played poorly. That should have beaten us by at least 30. Looked like they were going through the motions.

We looked awful. So unathletic. So small. No offense. Wholesale changes again after the season. Baseball can’t get here soon enough.

We have pieces and play hard. We desperately need Cross to do something. I also think the matchup zone killed us today. Sometimes you have to be flexible. We had to switch to man to man. They killed us from 3.

I know we are tired of the wait until next year mentality, but in this case it is the truth. We are very young. The next class must have 2 big guys in it.

[PeteRasche]

We looked awful. So unathletic. So small. No offense. Wholesale changes again after the season. Baseball can’t get here soon enough.

Careful, you are starting to sound like you did after the midseason losses in football when you wanted us to fire Fritz if not kill football completely. Step back from the ledge.

First of all, there will not be wholesale changes like last year because we have three juniors and everyone else is younger. Last year we brought in a bunch of one-year transfers who, while possibly better than this year's in terms of talent, had little to play for and indeed did quit at some point in January. That left us with another year of starting over. But the new guys this year are pretty much long-term, multi-year transfers or freshmen. This is their first year playing together (and practice time was limited by COVID) and you expect them to be better than last year's team? It's the same situation but with much less experience (last year's core were 5th year guys).

There are schools where a coach comes in and gets some studs and wins immediately. There are schools with lots of talent (that stays!) and it just takes a new coach to make them play well together and they win (**cough*cough*TommyBowden*cough*cough*). We are not either of these things. We are a program that has been down for so long that we aren't getting any big-time, instant-difference-maker transfers (or freshmen), and we also didn't have good enough (or "enough good"?) talent that stayed from the prior coach. This is a ground-up rebuild, but unlike 1989, Hunter tried to do it last year with one-year transfers and unfortunately that left us with basically starting from scratch again this year. In that respect, last year's plan was a failure. I'm not saying we should treat this like "year one" in terms of judging his performance in a year or two from now, but basically it IS year one again in terms of what you should be expecting. The difference is that if this team gets better as the year goes on and shows promise, there's a good chance a lot of the pieces will be back next year with that much more "gel" time together.

[OGSB]

Heads not turning! It almost like it never will in my lifetime.

Houston is ranked 11th...what were you expecting?

Sometimes you just have to tip your cap.

We do a lot of cap tipping.

[tjtlja]

We looked awful. So unathletic. So small. No offense. Wholesale changes again after the season. Baseball can’t get here soon enough.

Careful, you are starting to sound like you did after the midseason losses in football when you wanted us to fire Fritz if not kill football completely. Step back from the ledge.

Pete, be careful. You tend to exaggerate. I think Fritz is one of the best football coaches we have had in my lifetime. My unhappiness was with the coordinators and I hit .500. Fritz was sick of it too. And truth be told, you did as much whining as anyone, especially knocking the defense over and over when we faced good passing teams. Enough with this childish rhetoric.

As far as basketball goes, you cannot win if you cannot score or rebound. We can’t do either. We don’t have any athletic guards or bigs. I can see another exodus as the losses pile up. Especially those players that see diminished playing time as Hunter searches for answers. Basketball is in a tough situation.

[Charlie Dunn]

Agree re Fritz. He is a great coach and can’t wait for next season. Roll damn wave!!!

[Baywave1]

Game played out like it looked on paper. Houston is a legit Top 10 team. Tulane is a legit Top 150 team. Refs called it very loose so talent spread was even more apparent. Under Hunter's scheme, Tulane has to shoot 40% to be competitive against better teams. It shot 28%. UH made as many threes as Tulane made FGs.

Team is better than last year but that doesn't mean much when you have a recent history of cellar dwelling.

[doc]

Houston shot only 4 FT’s in the game.They are a perimeter team. When they are hot, they can beat almost anyone. When cold, lesser teams can beat them. Unfortunately Tulane caught them on a day they were hot.