{"id":61964,"date":"2025-11-23T19:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/61964\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T19:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T19:56:10","slug":"no-2-houston-takes-on-syracuse-chasing-players-era-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/61964\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 2 Houston takes on Syracuse chasing Player’s Era gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emanuel Sharp has played in 100 victories during his four-season career and even hard-nosed Houston<\/a> coach Kelvin Sampson is impressed.<\/p>\n

Sharp looks for win No. 101 when No. 2 Houston faces off with Syracuse<\/a> on Monday in the Players Era men’s championship at Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

The senior guard scored 15 points in Thursday’s easy 91-45 victory over visiting Rider to become the seventh player in Cougars’ history to reach the century mark.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I hope people around here don’t take that for granted,” Sampson said. “I’m assuming we’re going to win a few more games this year, so there’s no telling what that number will be.”<\/p>\n

Sharp is in his third season as a starter while averaging 16 points per game for Houston (5-0). He averaged 12.6 points in each of the previous two seasons.<\/p>\n

Sharp has knocked down 13 3-pointers this season to raise his career total to 225, which ranks eighth in school history. Former teammate Marcus Sasser (2019-23) holds the school mark of 276.<\/p>\n

“I’m proud of Emanuel,” Sampson said. “Emanuel was a COVID recruit. We didn’t see him in person. There were two recruits that year that we recruited on Zoom. … But Emanuel’s father really liked us. You could tell he wanted his son to come here.”<\/p>\n

Freshman point guard Kingston Flemings has been an immediate standout for the Cougars. He leads the squad in scoring (17.4), assists (5.2) and field-goal percentage (71.4).<\/p>\n

As for the tournament in Las Vegas, Sampson didn’t mince words when asked about Houston’s participation.<\/p>\n

“They’re giving us a million dollars, that’s why we’re there,” Sampson said. “I would say that’s why all the teams are there. We didn’t sign this to have a tournament where we could play each other. We signed up for this because they’re giving us a million dollars.<\/p>\n

“If they decided to put a court down in some vacant lot and they gave us a million dollars, I’d go and play there too.”<\/p>\n

Houston plays No. 20 Tennessee on Tuesday and a yet-to-be determined opponent on Wednesday or Thursday.<\/p>\n

Syracuse (4-0) is first up for the Cougars and the Orange have won their first four games for the first time since the 2017-18 season.<\/p>\n

The schedule has been soft so far and Syracuse struggled on Tuesday before posting a 78-73 home victory over Monmouth. Donnie Freeman led the Orange with 18 points and seven rebounds. He leads Syracuse with 17.8 points per game.<\/p>\n

Guard J.J. Starling understands the Orange can improve but said he’s optimistic with the team’s start.<\/p>\n

“Going into the tougher games where we know what we need to work on, we know where we’re clicking at,” Starling said. “It’s been a really good beginning of the season for us.”<\/p>\n

The Syracuse schedule gets tougher with Houston followed by No. 24 Kansas on Tuesday. The Orange also will have another game on Wednesday or Thursday.<\/p>\n

Syracuse coach Adrian Autry didn’t say anything about receiving $1 million. He just sees the chance to play against some top-flight foes.<\/p>\n

“We got to go there, we got to compete, we got to play well, we got to win also,” Autry said. “That doesn’t change.”<\/p>\n

The two programs met in the Sweet 16 of the 2021 NCAA Tournament, with Houston recording a 62-46 victory to reach the Elite Eight.<\/p>\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emanuel Sharp has played in 100 victories during his four-season career and even hard-nosed Houston coach Kelvin Sampson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2692,56,2742,58,57,9818],"class_list":{"0":"post-61964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-cougars","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news","13":"tag-syracuse-orange"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61964","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=61964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}