Sports
 

Cougars win, drive their fans crazy

Commentary

Christian Schmidt

They did it again.

Just when I thought I could give them up, the Houston men's basketball team goes out and wins. And not just any win, but a road win in conference, the type of win that can give a team momentum heading into the end of the season.

For five seasons, the Cougars have tormented me. First, Clyde Drexler was the head coach. How could the team not be destined for great things when a talented and famous alumnus returned to take the helm of a struggling program?

Well, it turned out Clyde the Glide didn't make the transition to Clyde the Coach. It turned out that coaching was harder work than Drexler was interested in doing.

Then Ray McCallum came to UH. Not the player or the name that Drexler was, but a real coach. The kind who can develop players. And the kind of coach who works hard. In short, McCallum looked like a coach who could lead this program to success.

One year of struggling with a 9-20 record. But that wasn't any surprise. Then the reward came. An 18-15 season in 2001-2 with a postseason berth (albeit just the National Invitation Tournament, not the NCAAs), a season that looked to spell the beginning of much greater things.

But when four starters from that NIT team left the program (two were out of eligibility, George Williams entered the NBA draft, Kevin Gaines was asked to leave), the team's chances of success seemed to leave as well.

An 8-20 campaign came in a year ago and Houston looked like it had taken a step back.

With a rocky start to this year, I thought I could finally stop caring about a team that finds new ways to raise its fans' hopes and then disappoint them.

But then they win a game against South Florida. I don't know what to think anymore.

Schmidt is a columnist for The Daily Cougar. 

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