It took a couple of late blocks, and a controversial stop at the buzzer, but No. 1 Houston survived a scare on Sunday afternoon in Alabama.<\/p>\n
The Cougars held on late to beat No. 22 Auburn 73-72 at Legacy Arena at BJCC in Birmingham, Alabama. It marked their first major win of the season for the Cougars, who now sit at 4-0 and should be solidified as the top-ranked team in the country when the new rankings come out on Monday.<\/p>\n
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The loss was the first of the season for the Tigers, who are now being led by Steven Pearl after his father Bruce\u2019s late retirement earlier this fall. They are now 1-15 all-time against teams ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll, too.<\/p>\n
Houston led the entire second half after a back-and-forth battle in the first, which saw eight lead changes and 10 ties in the opening 20 minutes. The Cougars slowly shut down offensively in the final minutes, though, and lost both Chris Cenac Jr. and Joseph Tugler, who fouled out late. Houston\u2019s last bucket came when Milos Uzan drilled a 3-pointer with 2:57 left in the game. That put the Cougars up by seven points at the time.<\/p>\n
Slowly, the Tigers started chipping away at that lead. Finally KeShawn Murphy got them within a point after Kingston Flemings committed a bad turnover on a pass intended for Emanuel Sharp with just under a minute to go. Sharp missed a 3-point look after that, too, and Houston committed another turnover to give Auburn a great look at the win.<\/p>\n
But Tahaad Pettiford just couldn\u2019t pull it off. He attacked the rim twice, but was stuffed there each time \u2014 first by Flemings and then again by Kalifa Sakho with just a second left. The ball went out of bounds in the corner after that, though, which set up a final look for the Tigers.<\/p>\n
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They tried to lob it into Murphy at the rim, but the Cougars expertly broke up the pass and ended the game there. Murphy was thrown to the ground in the scuffle, and looked livid as he sat there while the Cougars celebrated down the court. Steven Pearl came storming out and lit up the officials over the non-call, too, but it stood. That allowed Houston to escape with the one-point win.<\/p>\n
Hall led Auburn with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Pettiford added 15 points, and Kevin Overton finished with 13 points. They were the only Tigers players who hit double figures, and they missed 12 free throws as a unit.<\/p>\n
While a win for Auburn would have made a huge statement early, the Tigers should still be in great position to hang in a tough SEC battle this season. Sunday\u2019s game was just a taste of what\u2019s to come before conference play gets going, however. The Tigers will take on No. 6 Michigan, No. 5 Arizona and No. 2 Purdue all before the new year hits.<\/p>\n
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Flemings \u2014 who was part of a massive recruiting class for Houston coach Kelvin Sampson this past offseason \u2014 led the way with 22 points for the Cougars. He had 18 of those points in the first half, too. Cenac, a five-star Rivals.com recruit, added 18 points and nine rebounds before he fouled out. Sharp finished with 13 points. The Cougars went just 7-of-24 from behind the arc as a group.<\/p>\n
Though they nearly let it slip away in the end, Sampson and the Cougars found a way to win on Sunday. Their quest to avenge last season\u2019s rough loss to Florida in the national championship game is still alive and well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took a couple of late blocks, and a controversial stop at the buzzer, but No. 1 Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2895,3139,29233,27383,9197,3119,56,58,57,3120,26195,3125,29232,2763,3111,17305],"class_list":["post-52503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-alabama","tag-auburn","tag-birmingham","tag-chris-cenac-jr","tag-cougars","tag-emanuel-sharp","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-joseph-tugler","tag-kingston-flemings","tag-milos-uzan","tag-steven-pearl","tag-tahaad-pettiford","tag-the-cougars","tag-the-tigers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52503","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=52503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}