After falling just two points short of claiming the national championship in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the Houston Cougars are on a mission to finish the job in 2026.<\/p>\n
The No. 8 Cougars opened the season with a 12-1 record in nonconference play, highlighted by multiple wins over ranked opponents, including a 73-72 victory over No. 22 Auburn and a 94-85 win against No. 14 Arkansas.<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s lone loss came in a 76-73 nail-biter against No. 17 Tennessee.<\/p>\n
Guard Emanuel Sharp, a standout on both ends of the floor last season, has picked up right where he left off in 2026. The senior is averaging a team-leading 17 points per game. Freshman Kingston Flemings has also made an immediate impact, averaging 15.3 points per contest.<\/p>\n
The Cougars now face a loaded slate in Big 12 play, featuring five other teams ranked in the latest coaches poll: No. 2 Arizona, No. 3 Iowa State, No. 10 BYU, No. 16 Texas Tech and No. 17 Kansas.<\/p>\n
Houston opens conference play on Jan. 3, when it travels to Cincinnati to take on the Bearcats. Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. on Fox.<\/p>\n
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Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After falling just two points short of claiming the national championship in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1770,2692,416,56,2742,58,57,3113,48876,223,154,5370,48877,513],"class_list":["post-108924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-houston","tag-houston-cougars","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-kelvin-sampson","tag-march-madness","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-uh","tag-uh-cougars","tag-university-of-houston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}