Cougars set to play TCU
By Jake McKim
Daily Cougar Staff
Coming off a difficult home loss to highly
ranked Cincinnati on Saturday, the Cougars must now regroup and prepare
to battle scrappy
conference opponent Texas Christian.
Kevin Harwerth/The Daily
Cougar
Junior forward Louis Truscott
takes the ball for a lay-up against Rice on Nov. 29. The Cougars won the
game by a single point, 62-61.
Cincinnati, riding a 14-game winning streak
-- the nation's longest -- rolled into Hofheinz Saturday. As UH head coach
Ray McCallum correctly
pointed out, the Bearcats "did what they
had to do," knocking off the Cougars 83-62. The victory moved the Bearcats
to 15-1 on the season and
3-0 in Conference USA, while UH dropped
to 7-7 on the season, 1-2 in C-USA.
Now the Cougars will turn their focus to
a TCU team that is much better than its 0-3 C-USA record indicates. All
three of the Horned Frogs
losses came at the hands of some of the
top teams in the conference -- Louisville, South Florida and Memphis.
Unfortunately for the Cougars, tonight's
visiting team is likely upset at its conference record and will look to
improve against Houston.
"We're gonna need to concentrate on getting
back in transition if we're gonna beat TCU," junior forward Louis Truscott
said. "TCU's a running
team so we're gonna need to cut our turnovers
down and get back on defense."
As for the team's mindset following the
loss to Cincinnati, Truscott said that it remains positive as the team
prepares for the rest of the season.
"We just want to turn this negative (the
loss to Cincinnati) into a positive and just build toward the end of the
season," Truscott said. "We wanna
try to make it to the postseason and to
do that we just need to gel together as a team."
Truscott and junior forward Jeremee McGuire
have emerged as two of the most energetic and crowd-electrifying players
on this season's
squad. McGuire attributed his fire and
intensity on the court to Cougar fans.
"It's a great thing to have people come
to the games," McGuire said. "We need all the support we can get so the
support is great."
Despite not having been able to watch tape
of TCU in action at the time of this interview, McGuire felt two things
are a must for the Cougars to
walk away with a win Tuesday night.
"We just need to make sure we communicate
and play defense and our offense will come together," McGuire said.
The Horned Frogs, in their first year of
competition in C-USA, are guided by junior guard Junior Blount (averaging
16.0 points per game),
freshman guard Corey Santee (15.8 points
per game) and junior forward Bingo Merriex (13.3 points per game, 6.9 rebounds).
In addition, junior
forward Jamal Brown has been a ball-hog
on the boards for the Frogs this season, averaging a dominant 10.4 rebounds
per game.
Tickets are free for students upon presentation
of Cougar 1Card at the Hofheinz Pavilion box office. Tip-off is at 7:30
p.m.
