Houston head coach Tom Penders said Thursday before his team left for Greenville, N.C. that a young, athletic East Carolina team could pose problems for the Cougars.
He, as well as his players, had a feeling that the Pirates would have a student section filled to the brim to give their team a true home court advantage and make it a little more difficult to come out with a win. In fact, he even predicted the game would go down to the wire.
Penders was on the money. The only problem was that his team was on the losing side of things.
The Cougars suffered an 84-83 loss to East Carolina on Saturday night in a trap game that made Houston’s goal of reaching the NCAA Tournament exceedingly more difficult.
Houston has been a team on the bubble for the last month, and for the most part it has come away with victories against the teams it was expected to beat. The Cougars only dropped games against Memphis and Alabama-Birmingham in their last five games heading into ECU.
On Saturday night, however, the Cougars got off to a slow start in a hostile environment at Williams Arena and never fully recovered. East Carolina jumped out to an early 8-0 lead and never looked back in the first half, going into the locker room with a 49-37 advantage.
Houston started the second half on a 13-4 run led by junior guard DaShaun Williams, who recorded 4 points, an assist and a rebound in the 3:14 run. The run ended with a Williams layup to cut Houston’s deficit to 53-50.
The Cougars continued to fight back in the second half and actually took a short-lived lead when senior guard Dion Dowell drained a shot from downtown to put the Cougars up 78-75 with 3:08 remaining.
After taking its first lead, Houston had a chance to extend it as time expired, but for the first time all season the Cougars couldn’t knock down their clutch free throws.
Senior guards Robert "Fluff" McKiver, Lanny Smith and Dowell are all shooting over 85 percent from the foul line this season. McKiver and Dowell even lead Conference USA with free throw percentages of 88.3 and 88.2. But in the last 2:30, all three guards missed crucial shots at the charity stripe that could have drastically changed the outcome of the game.
East Carolina guard Cory Farmer hit both of his free throws with 22 seconds left to give his team an 84-83 lead. Houston had a chance to go for the win when McKiver put up a jumper with three seconds left, but the ball missed its mark.
Houston fell to 21-7 with the loss and 10-4 in Conference USA play while Alabama-Birmingham beat Tulane 69-44 and improved to 28-8 with an 11-3 C-USA record. UAB holds sole possession of second place in the conference. The Cougars will play their last regular-season game at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Hofheinz Pavilion.
