Kenpom\u2019s analytic engine forecasts Arizona winning 72-69.<\/p>\n
Playing Arizona for the Big 12 Tournament championship might appear to offer Houston something of a make-up opportunity, since the Wildcats beat them out for a regular-season title the Cougars were picked to win.<\/p>\n
But veteran Houston guard Emanuel Sharp said he doesn\u2019t look at it that way.<\/p>\n
“It does not make it up. We just lost the league. It is what it is,\u201d Sharp said. \u201cWe\u2019re just trying to get better, and that\u2019s winning every game that we play. We approach every game that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cougars lost the league because they lost three straight games in February, to Iowa State, Arizona and Kansas. But since then the Cougars have won five games by an average of 17.8 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring that three-game stretch we wanted to win but I\u2019d rather lose those games and learn from them and get better going forward,\u201d Sharp said. Against Arizona \u201cI had to play better defense, I gotta play better team defense. I felt I played selfishly at home and it really hurt the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Numbers game<\/p>\n
7: Arizona players who have made 100 or more field goals this season, after Dell\u2019Orso reached 105 by going 10 for 14 against Iowa State, the only power conference team to have achieved as many.<\/p>\n
8: Double-doubles this season by reserve forward Awaka, who had 10 points and 10 rebounds against Iowa State.<\/p>\n
89.1: Free throw shooting percentage of Houston\u2019s Sharp, ranking him 38th nationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenpom\u2019s analytic engine forecasts Arizona winning 72-69. Playing Arizona for the Big 12 Tournament championship might appear to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,51881],"class_list":["post-204923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-re-issue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204923","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=204923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}