The #8 Houston Cougars put on a defensive clinic on the UCF Knights on Tuesday night, holding UCF to just 16 field goals en route to a 79-55 victory.<\/p>\n
This was a reality check for UCF, who has not beaten Houston since March of 2019. The defense was suffocating and handed the Knights a tough lesson.<\/p>\n
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Here are three things we learned from the game:<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s defense is elite \u2026 again<\/p>\n
The Cougs are gonna Coug. Last year\u2019s national runners-up look to be primed for another run this year, and they\u2019ve gotten better.<\/p>\n
Kelvin Sampson\u2019s defense speaks for itself. UCF turned the ball over 11 times, which is in line with their season average. But Houston\u2019s real defensive game plan is to contest and force misses. They held UCF to 16\/52 from the floor (30.7%), 17 percentage points below their season average.<\/p>\n
Riley Kugel, Jordan Burks and Themus Fulks combined for 6\/32 from the field. That\u2019s not going to get it done.<\/p>\n
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And that\u2019s what Houston does to you on defense: They take your best options and eliminate them. But now they have an additional option on offense.<\/p>\n
Kingston Flemings is a problem<\/p>\n
Where Houston needed to improve from last year was offensively, and Kingston Flemings definitely gives them what they need. Flemings averages 17 per game, two more than LJ Cryer, Houston\u2019s leading scorer from last season, but his explosiveness sets him apart (See his 42 against Texas Tech). He\u2019s also bumped his production up to just under 20 per game in Big 12 play, and his 20 against UCF kept the Knights\u2019 interior defense off-balance.<\/p>\n
Opponents are trying to shut down Themus Fulks<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear now that UCF\u2019s offense runs through Themus Fulks. Houston knew that and threw everything they had at him. He was mostly a non-factor at Houston, going 3\/10 with 8 points, 3 assists, and 3 turnovers. JaMichael Stillwell, a post player, doubled his assist output with 6.<\/p>\n
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If UCF is to succeed in March, they will have to figure out who can pick up the slack if and when teams decide to take Themus out of the game. Easier said than done (just ask Texas Tech), but Houston can do it. So it will be up to Riley Kugel and Chris Johnson off the bench to force opponents to handle them as well, and relieve pressure off Themus.<\/p>\n
That said, Houston is maybe the only team in the Big 12 that can shut down UCF\u2019s offense to this extent. I wouldn\u2019t put too much stock into what happened other than Houston is just that good.<\/p>\n
Bottom line: Tuesday was a valuable lesson in the level UCF will have to step up to as the final month of the regular season progresses.<\/p>\n
Next Stop: Cincinnati<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s tilt at Cincinnati will be a big test for the Knights. UCF was fortunate in the first meeting, as the Bearcats\u2019 game-winner went in and out at the horn.<\/p>\n
Now UCF has to go into their place, where they haven\u2019t won since February of 2020. How the Knights respond will show us what we can expect from this team the rest of the month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The #8 Houston Cougars put on a defensive clinic on the UCF Knights on Tuesday night, holding UCF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,2742,58,57,63684,27,63683,9816,3416],"class_list":{"0":"post-154044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-cougars","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-lj-cryer","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-themus-fulks","15":"tag-ucf-knights","16":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154044","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=154044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}