The Houston men’s basketball team got past Tulane behind an offensive explosion in the second half in the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals on Friday evening.
Senior guard DeJon Jarreau was a big part of the team’s success against Tulane. He did a little bit of everything throughout the matchup, which included a dime of a pass to senior forward Justin Gorham that threaded past two Green Wave defenders and led to an easy layup for Gorham.
Jarreau finished the game with 15 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. He is the first UH player to have a triple-double since Bo Outlaw in 1993. He is also only the seventh player to do that in program history.
“We just started to play Cougar basketball,” senior guard DeJon Jarreau told reporters after the game. “Credit to (Tulane), they came out ready, but once we got home to what we do, the game changed. We started offensive rebounding. We started getting stops. We just got home to how we play basketball.”
The Cougars shot an impressive 60 percent from the field and put up 44 points in the second half. UH had struggled from the field in the first half, shooting only 36 percent, but slowly started to turn it around in the second period and were able to pull away as the half progressed.
Back-to-back 3-pointers from junior guard Quentin Grimes and sophomore guard Marcus Sasser gave UH its first double-digit lead in the game towards the middle of the second half, and the Cougars only kept building the momentum from there. UH held Tulane to only 29.6 percent shooting from the field in the second.
Grimes finished with 15 points and four rebounds. Sasser had 14 points and five rebounds.
The Cougars now await the winner of Memphis and UCF, which will tipoff at 9 p.m.