Kelvin Sampson and the Houston Cougars took down Texas Tech 69-61 on Monday night in one of the biggest games of the year.
The 4th-rank Coogs and 10th-ranked Red Raiders traded haymakers all night, but it was Houston who came out victorious, thanks to a career-high 22 points from Milos Uzan, including a three-point dagger to give UH a six-point advantage with under a minute to go.
The game didn’t quite have the hype that it was expected to, however, as both of Texas Tech’s top guards—Darrion Williams and Chance McMillian—missed the game with injuries.
The Red Raiders hung in there though, and gave Houston all it wanted with another double-double performance from JT Toppin and a staple performance from Kerwin Walton, who played more minutes than he had since the second game of the season.
The outcome counts as Houston’s 16th victory in conference play, and their 20th win in their last 21 games. However, the Cougars’ head coach suggested that things could’ve looked a lot different had the home team been at full strength.
“For us to do what we did tonight was great, but there’s an asterisk as far as I’m concerned,” Sampson said of the win. “I think I saw where we’ve won 20 out of 21, or something like that, and we’ve beaten a lot of good teams. Won at Arizona. Won at West Virginia. Won at Kansas. We’ve got a really good team, but so does Texas Tech when they’re healthy. They’re really good too.”
Texas Tech head coach Grant McCasland wasn’t having anything to do with a moral victory, however, as he says they way that the Cougars won was “undeniable.”
“They won the game and they beat us in a way that I felt like was undeniable,” McCasland said. “When you come up with loose balls to finish the game and you make shots to win it, it doesn’t matter who’s playing. You’re not going to go to the end of the year and go, hey remember when they played without. … nobody cares.
“There’s no asterisk in this, this is awesome. It’s to their credit that they won this game. It was an awesome Big 12 atmosphere.”
