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After the road loss in Wichita and the latest meltdown on the board, SMU remains in 2nd place in both the AAC standings and the NET rankings. Can we compete with Houston is the question?

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketbal ... t-rankings

Exactly, CP...UH, at #6, would be a huge home W and I am confident we can pull it off. They have won 12 in a row, so they are due for a ΓÇ£sickening stumble.ΓÇ¥ That thin UH roster puts us in a good spot. #RunPoniesRun

It will be a ΓÇ£season-definingΓÇ¥ game. Which SMU team will show up? The team that played at WSU doesn’t have a prayer. The other SMU team, the one that finished properly at Tulane and against Temple? Has to be that one to have any chance at all.

And btw: Houston ain’t no Tulane or Temple.

Gotta have a good game from our three bigs and KD has to come out of his slump.

Terry Webster wrote:Gotta have a good game from our three bigs and KD has to come out of his slump.

EVERYBODY has to play their best so Houston can't focus on K.D. and take him out of this game. I don't see this team beating Houston unless everybody is "on" and the defensive intensity is beyond what we've seen all year. The roster is deep enough so no reason for anyone to relax at any point in this one. Have to hope Marcus doesn't get in foul trouble early as I expect Houston to take it to him.

Agree.

Against a Samson-coached team players need to be scrappy, resilient, and go for every rebound and loose ball like their life depends upon it. Houston players do that.

DC-Pony wrote:Agree.

Against a Samson-coached team players need to be scrappy, resilient, and go for every rebound and loose ball like their life depends upon it. Houston players do that.

It will be fascinating to see the coaching strategies of Sampson and Jankovich in this one.

Go Ponies!

Sampson will try everything he can to take advantage of our lack of height. I would expect to see a lot of what we saw against WSU - feed the ball to the paint and hit the offensive glass.

We are going to have to hit threes to compete in the game.

The challenge is that we do a good job creating open 3s in transition. In the half court, without a low post presence, we have stopped moving the ball around quickly enough to create open shots. So, if Houston is able to score efficiently, we won't create good looks from 3. That is what happened against WSU.

I hope we win, but I am not overly optimistic that we match up very well against Houston, Cincy, or WSU. @Temple is going to be really tough as well for the same reasons. I would not be surprised to see us close the season 4-4 (4-5 if we make up the WSU game). Losing Houston, @Houston, Cincy, @Temple, and WSU (if make it up). None of those are "bad" losses. But we might be hitting a run of games against teams that will give us a lot of problems.

We are up 8 slots to 52 this morning. North Texas is 51 and TCU is 54.

Smu at 46,Memphis 45

indianmustang wrote:Smu at 46,Memphis 45

And our lil buddies up in Denton sit at 42. I wish we could play them.

we move up 1 spot

shadowman wrote:

indianmustang wrote:Smu at 46,Memphis 45

And our lil buddies up in Denton sit at 42. I wish we could play them.

Both UNT and UAB have very competitive basketball programs

Memphis wins at Cincinnati last night. Both Memphis and SMU appear to be coming on strong as the regular season winds down

Setting up nicely for a great game if we can get through Temple. This is fun, what it’s all about.