SALT LAKE CITY — It didn’t take long to see that Emanuel Sharp was playing on a different level Tuesday night at the Huntsman Center.
In the first 10 minutes of the game, the Houston guard had 18 points behind six made 3-pointers on seven attempts. Sharp missed his first 3-point attempt 50 seconds into the game, and then went lights out over the next nine minutes and hit six straight shots from deep before being subbed out of the game.
Catch-and-shoot 3-pointer? Easy work. Spot-up jumper from deep? No problem. From the logo? Light work. Sharp made it all look effortless Tuesday night.
His hot shooting, mixed with a stingy team defense, helped No. 3 Houston to a 15-point lead in the first half that eventually ballooned to a 22-point lead en route to a 66-52 weeknight win over Utah.
It was the lowest points scored by Utah this season.
“They do what they do, and they really expose your weakness as a team. … It’s hard to win games when you have as many turnovers as points, and give up 20 points off those turnovers,” Utah head coach Alex Jensen said.
The Utes finished the game with 13 turnovers, and the Cougars turned those into 20 points on the other end of the floor in a highly-effective way to capitalize on Utah’s mistakes.
“They do what they do; they don’t change very much,” Jensen said. “They’ve got a really good team, and they make it hard for you — like, our margin for error as a team is small, but especially against Houston offensively, it’s going to be that much smaller.”
Utah (9-15, 1-10 Big 12) got some aggressive play out of Keanu Dawes as one of the only players to find some relief against Houston’s defense, but it wasn’t enough to combat the hot shooting of Sharp or Houston’s overall game play.
Dawes finished with a team-high 15 points and eight rebounds, while Seydou Traore added 12 points, two rebounds and three assists.
Utah forward Keanu Dawes (8) shoots the ball while guarded by Houston guard Isiah Harwell (1) during an NCAA basketball game held at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Photo: Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
Utah’s two leading scorers for the season, Terrence Brown and Don McHenry, were held to just 17 points combined, with Brown finishing with 12 points — half of which coming from the free-throw line late — on 3-of-8 shooting.
For Houston (22-2, 10-1 Big 12), Sharp eventually cooled in his shooting — if hitting only two more 3-pointers over the course of the game counts — but other players got into a rhythm to help the team pull away from Utah.
Sharp finished with a team-high 27 points — all but one being 3-pointers and a free throw — in 31 minutes for Houston. With his eight made 3-pointers, Sharp became the all-time leader in school history for 3-pointers made in a game.
And while that honor pleased Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson, he highlighted Sharp’s defense as being a bigger deal to the team’s success.
“He’s been a huge part of why this program has been successful,” Sampson said. “He’s the best defender on our team, and he’s a tough kid. … I think Emanuel is the best defensive guard that we’ve seen. He’s the best on-ball, defensive guard at the wing that I’ve coached now.”
Jensen said part of Sharp’s success — beyond just being talented on both ends of the floor — was Utah making more of an emphasis to rebound than perimeter defense. But it was picking one poison and trading it for another Tuesday night.
“We really focused on the rebounding, because that’s where I think they really bury you, like they get the ball up and then they crash two or three guys and just smother you on the boards,” Jensen said. “But he had the six threes, and that was the difference in the first half. I didn’t mind them making threes. … I mean, give him credit, he had a great game. But we didn’t help ourselves there in a couple of them early.”
No other player for the Cougars finished with double-digit scoring, though Joseph Tugler and Milos Uzan both finished with 9 points apiece in the win.
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