Sports
 

UH won't settle for moral victory

Lady Coogs ready to start new winning streak vs. South Florida, Alabama-Birmingham 

By Christian Schmidt
The Daily Cougar

It's 9 a.m. Wednesday -- a time when many students are just waking up.

But if you're a member of the UH women's basketball team, you've been awake for more than two hours. You're halfway through an intense, two-hour practice led by assistant coach Todd Buchanon. Head coach Joe Curl, who usually leads practice, is absent today on a private matter.

You have some hard work to do (full-court scrimmages, running drills, practicing offensive and defensive sets), because you're coming off a loss to Louisville, a team that wasn't ranked and had a 2-2 Conference USA record coming into the game.

And losing to teams like Louisville won't help you become C-USA champion. Anything less than a championship will be a disappointment.

"We have been coming out pretty hard, but Sunday we didn't really," junior guard Joanne Overstreet said. "We get sloppy in the middle of games sometimes, and we couldn't come back (against Louisville)."

Even with that loss, Houston is 15-3 overall, 4-1 in C-USA and still on track for the best season in the program's history.

"With three losses, that's not bad," Overstreet said. "But we'd rather be undefeated. We're progressing each game. Sunday, we took a little step back, but we've been moving forward."

The Lady Cougars have a shot at redemption at 3 p.m. Saturday when they take on South Florida and then come back west to play Alabama-Birmingham at 7 p.m. Monday.

"This is a really tough league, but our destiny is still in our hands," Buchanon said. "This league is too tough for anyone to walk through and not have one or two losses."

South Florida (8-11, 1-5) isn't the best in the conference, but as the Lady Cougars learned, any team in C-USA can beat any other team. The Lady Bulls have lost five of their last six games, though they lost to No. 13 DePaul by just 10 points 84-74.

Jessica Dickson leads the Lady Bulls with 16.1 points per game. Nalini Miller is second with 11.8 points and leads the team with 8.4 rebounds per game.

UAB (7-12, 1-5) has lost six of its last seven games, including double-digit losses to Memphis on Friday and Saint Louis on Sunday. In fact, six of the Lady Blazers' seven wins this season have come against a set of lower-level opponents like Belmont, Florida Atlantic and Alcorn State.

Natasha Thomas leads the Lady Blazers in scoring with 14.8 points per game and is also No. 1 in rebounding with 7.7 per contest. Crystal McFadden is second on the team with 13.1 points per game.

The Lady Cougars have been a much better team this year in large part because of Overstreet and fellow junior Sancho Lyttle, a 6-3 forward with excellent speed and athleticism.

Overstreet leads the team with 4.3 assists per game and Lyttle is second in scoring with 16.3 points per game and first in rebounding with 9.3 rebounds per game.

"We're taking things one practice at a time," Buchanon said. "We just had a 10-game win streak stopped, so we want to have another 10-game win streak."

One thing that will be in Houston's favor will be the location of the games. The Lady Cougars are 10-1 on the road this year, a better record than their 4-2 mark at Hofheinz Pavilion.

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