Sports

UH back in friendly territory

By Christian Schmidt
The Daily Cougar

The Lady Cougars will look to get their season back on track this weekend as they host Charlotte at 7 p.m. tonight and East Carolina at 1 p.m. Sunday. Houston lost two conference contests against Louisville and Cincinnati last weekend, dropping the teamis record to 1-2 in Conference USA play, 9-6 overall.

Head coach Joe Curl stressed to his team the need to move on and keep doing business as usual.

"Thatis whatis great about older players. They have a short memory when it comes to bad things, a missed shot or even a loss," Curl said. "Weire trying to teach them, that we want to learn from the road trip, because we want to do better, but we need to have a short memory."

The Lady Cougars have struggled on the road this season, going 1-3 in road games (2-2 at neutral sites), but the friendly confines of Hofheinz Pavilion have been good to Houston this year. The Lady Cougars are 6-1 at home.

Against Cincinnati and Louisville, the Lady Cougarsi defense was not as good as it has been. The Lady Cougars had their fewest steals of the year against the two teams, and allowed Cincinnati to shoot 62 percent from the field. This weekend Houston will have to improve their defense and play smarter offense to win.

"We know what we did wrong, thereis no reason to kick a dead horse, we just need to get it fixed," Curl said.

UH will also have to improve its post play. Houston has been consistently outrebounded this season. The team has a minus-5.1 rebounding margin. Center Kiki Harris and backup Emily Fryters will need to give the team a consistent low-post presence.

Junior guard Chandi Jones leads the nation in scoring average at 27.3 points per game. She leads the Lady Cougars in rebounding at 8.1 per game, field goal percentage (50.5 percent), three-point percentage (40.8 percent), steals (57) and blocks (18).

Charlotte might be the most improved team in the conference this season, at least according to Curl. The Lady 49ers are 10-5 this season and 2-0 in conference.

East Carolina is 8-7 on the season, though the Lady Pirates have dropped both of their conference matchups.

 Send comments to dcsports@mail.uh.edu