When the adrenaline wore off and the rumbling in the stands from the sold-out crowd of 8,918 died down Wednesday night, UH found itself fighting to stay alive against Memphis – The Associated Press No. 1 team in the country.
Houston (15-4, 4-1 Conference USA) would apply its full-court trap and run the court against the Tigers (now 20-0, 6-0 C-USA) until the final score read 89-77.
It was evident with senior guard Dion Dowell’s three-point shot with 1.4 seconds left, which was made possible by a trap and a forced turnover seconds earlier; simply letting the clock run down was never an option for head coach Tom Penders and his team.
"You can back off and say, ‘OK, we lost by 10 points,’ and let them dribble the clock out, but I don’t think you teach your team anything when you do that," Penders said. "In my opinion, you try to keep playing."
The Cougars switched, trapped and pressed for about 85 percent of the game. Those were their only means of staying in the game, Penders said. It’s hard to beat any team that can shoot 58.5 percent from the floor.
"Without our trapping defense tonight, I don’t think we would have been in reach at any time," Penders said. "Our kids played their hearts out. I’m proud of the way our kids played. We had 45 deflections and turned them over 22 times. We never gave up."
That might have been the reason junior guard DaShaun Williams got his first start as a Cougar and played a season-high 36 minutes against one of the most-feared teams in the country.
"It was all about playing hard," Williams said. "Coach thought that I could come in and make a difference on the defensive end. He thought that I could pick it up early for us so they couldn’t get so many baskets. He just thought that I could come in and give us a defensive effort."
The Cougars pulled to within eight points with 8:26 remaining after McKiver threw an alleyoop to Dowell to put the score at 70-62. Every time Houston made a run, Memphis’ Chris Douglas-Roberts, who ended the game with 30 points, or Robert Dozier (21 points) would respond by scoring in bunches to suck the wind out of the crowd and the Cougars.
Senior guard Robert "Fluff" McKiver said Houston’s ability to hang with the Tigers early in the contest was a good sign of things to come.
"It shows what kind of team we can be potentially. Potential is a scary word, but it just shows how good we can potentially be," McKiver said. "We showed that we’re not afraid of anybody. We’re going to come out here and fight to the end. Guys like DaShaun Williams, Brockeith (Pane) and Dion Dowell never stop fighting. I’m not into moral victories, but we got a lot from tonight. We know how much better we need to get and where we are so far."
