MBB v Houston Game Thread

[ponyboy]

We got beat by a better team, but we had our chances. Ice cold shooting by some of our key guys and rebounding woes.

[H-E-B Mustang]

In addition to being out-rebounded by Houston, they were 12-12 in free throws while we were only 4-10 in the second half.

[mustangxc]

Houston was tested and we weren’t. Simple as that. Blame Hart for approving the Charmin schedule.

[tristatecoog]

Kendrick is possibly the POY in the AAC. If some of the other Ponies, besides Feron, were hitting, he'd have more assists and it would've been a much tighter game. Only 3-12 from three in the first half but SMU had strong intensity with a two rebound advantage. UH got Sasser and Grimes back in the second half (two fouls) and drained some threes to lead the early going. Jank said the game plan was to limit Gorham but that didn't work (11 pts and 19 rebounds). If UH's plan was to limit Kendrick, that didn't work either except down the stretch when he was running out of gas.

Got the five pack, so I'm looking forward to Thursday night.

[geezerdonk]

SMU wins the hot-dogging, show-boating trophy; Houston wins the basketball game.

[EastStang]

Hard to tell if all those missed 3 footers were due to Houston's defense or our lack of ability inside the paint. If you have the ball inside the paint, it should take great defense to stop you. Just being challenged should not cause you to miss. Our bigs need to be playing lots of one on one with each other in the paint so that they have the practice of taking creative shots when challenged.

[digman52]

Double double for Ferson. Great hustle game for him tonight

We could have used a Ferson out there tonight. Feron did battle tough tonight, but our outside shots were off all game.

It was maybe the faithful 700 there tonight, with 100 being Houston fans. The Houston bench got loud during the second half. When we got it back to 4 points from 12, the crowd helped a little.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

PA announcer: "Ethan Chag-trois — that means '3' in French"

Seriously? How embarrassing!

That's worse than Bill Melton's "three...point...play".

[JasonB]

Band and McNeil were off their game, missed some wide open threes.

We needed those shots to overcome the fact that Houston dominated the inside on both sides of the court. Ethan and Jasey couldn't handle them on either end, and Houston was good enough to take advantage of Yor's frantic play on the defensive side. The offensive rebounding absolutely killed us.

Houston is a good team. This games shows that we need to clean up the rebounding issues to join that level.

[MustangStealth]

We're not bad but we could really use some more scorers. Feels like we don't have a plan B much less plan C.

[Terry Webster]

Really was telling that our two big men had 1 rebound between them

[ponyboy]

Houston was tested and we weren’t. Simple as that. Blame Hart for approving the Charmin schedule.

But is this true? Of Georgia, Vandy, and Dayton, we only got to play the latter team. Not Hart’s fault.

By the way, another factor to consider for our loss: Houston’s very good, a legit Sweet 16 team. We are not there yet. It’s ok. We look like a Tourney team.

[mustangxc]

The issue is that our non-conference schedule wasn't going to be good even with a full slate of games. It only got worse thanks to the pandemic and Jankovich and/or Hart weren't able to add any replacement games for the ones that were cancelled.

[JasonB]

Really was telling that our two big men had 1 rebound between them

Wow, that is a huge stat.

We are lucky that there aren't a lot of teams with elite, long athletes. It certainly showed our deficiencies.

I'm really interested to see if we see a change in the rotation on Thursday. The loss enables you to play Hunt at the 4 and Yor at the 5 with Ethan and Jasey off the bench at those spots if you want. It would add Douglas back to the rotation at the 3, but a starting lineup of Davis-McNeil-Band-Hunt-Yor would be elite athletically. Hunt would be a double-double machine if he is willing to hit the defensive boards hard.

[ponyboy]

Yeah, that game was like getting a cat scan. You don't like doing it, but at least you know where you are. Lots of things were exposed as opportunities for improvement. I like what you say re rotation.

By the way, one thing is now clear: KD is the biggest winner we've had since Nic. He's a truly elite college player.