If there were such a thing as justice in this world, then there would have been no winner to Saturday’s Houston/Southern Mississippi basketball game. Unfortunately, the rules of basketball dictate that there must be a winner, thus Southern Mississippi’s Torye Pelham tipped in the ball as the buzzer sounded to give the Golden Eagles the 57-55 come-from-behind win.
But this was truly a game that nobody deserved to win. The Cougars limped out to an early 11-0 win, but scored just 18 points for the remainder of the first half. Luckily, the Golden Eagles sucked even worse from the floor and the halftime score was a blistering 29-21 Cougars.
The Cougars benefited from Southern Mississippi’s 30-percent first-half shooting, though the Cougars really weren’t much better, hitting just 40 percent of their shots. Then again, the Cougars would have been thrilled to shoot 40 percent from the floor in the second half. Hell, if they could have shot 30 percent from the floor they might have gotten the win.
But this is the Houston Cougars of which we’re speaking.
Southern Mississippi finally grabbed the lead with nine minutes remaining in the game, and the Cougars were done. Done.
The Cougars continued with a troubling habit. Well, they continued with
several troubling habits. They got a big lead and they gave it up. They
couldn’t hit shots from the floor. They couldn’t make foul shots.
That’s a combination for losing basketball, and no matter how much
talent a team might have, most teams just can’t overcome that
combination.
“It’s tough….today, I thought we had a lot of nice open looks and
missed,” head coach Tom Penders said. “You try not to, as a coach, draw
too much attention to that [missing open shots] because the kids, I
think, have a tendency to get tighter and tighter. You want them taking
their shots. And I thought today, for the most part, we took some
really good shots. We missed too many put backs in tight, close to the
basket, which obviously didn’t help us at all.”
Despite everything, the Cougars could have won this game. But the
Cougars missed five free throws in the second half, including Desmond
Wade missing one of two with 31.3 seconds left that would have given
the Cougars the lead. Instead, the game was tied at 55-55, making the
last second heroics of Pelham possible.
The game-winner came off of a mistake. Maurice McNeil tripped and fell
into Aubrey Coleman as a pass was coming down toward Pelham. Coleman
and McNeil were both confident that if not for the trip, then Coleman
gets the ball. Instead he tips it to Pelham who misses the lay-up. But
with the second clock in the fractions, Pelham went back up and tipped
the ball where it rolled around the rim as the horn sounded before
falling through the netting.
The referees had to gather at the press table to review the play, but
the Cougar loss was clearly evident even before the Golden Eagles went
storming off of the court jumping and celebrating.
“We were hoping that it didn’t count….,” a subdued Coleman said
afterwards. But “it came down to that right there [the team missing
free throws in the second half.]”
he Cougars finished the game shooting only 32.3 percent, including 14.3
percent (two for 14) from three-point range. And they were a pitiful 13
for 22 from the free throw line.
They could have won the game. In many ways, they should have won the
game. But they didn’t really deserve to win the game. Not playing the
way did.
The Cougars record dropped to 11-11 on the season and 4-5 in
conference. And a season that began with promise is quickly
deteriorating into great disappointment.
There are only eight regular season games remaining — only three of
which are at home, though judging from the lack of a crowd on Saturday,
it’s pretty damn evident that no one outside the basketball team really
gives a damn.
Coleman and Penders said the right things after the game. That the team
focus is on gaining momentum for the conference tournament. The
tournament being important because the only team from C-USA going into
the NCAA tournament will be the one that wins the C-USA tournament.
This just all goes to show that if there were any justice in the world,
no team from C-USA would get into the NCAA Tournament. Unfortunately,
the rules dictate that the winner of every conference tournament gets
into the tourney. The Cougars play a non-conference game against
Western Kentucky on Tuesday, then return to Hofheinz Pavilion to play
SMU on Saturday afternoon.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2010.
