Stats That Defined Houston’s Loss Against Illinois

You win some. You lose some.

For Houston basketball, it was a loss that they’ll remember for a while.

It will sting. It will hurt. It will be painful.

One thing that head coach Kelvin Sampson and Co. never stopped doing was fighting, and that’s what this Cougars roster should be remembered for.

Their heart. Their Hustle. Their maturity.

Through the thick and thin and valleys and mountains, this group played the entire 40 minutes of basketball to the end with everything it got and fell just short of the mark. What were a couple of the areas that were not executed well that resulted in the Illini finding the success it did?

Zero Fastbreak Points and Two Free Throws

Not everything can go a program’s way. Sometimes shots fall. Other times, they scratch the iron. At Toyota Center, in front of thousands of fans rooting for the home team, the Cougars saw one of the slowest starts of the season.

Going into the locker room for the halftime speech by Sampson, there were zero bench points which is typically not normal for a Sweet Sixteen team to have but not unusual if a coach likes to stick to his team’s identity and a lot of that is paying the guys who have been in the rotation that have the agility and endurance to go deep in games.

In Houston, three men registered 36 or more minutes, which means there weren't many opportunities for the guys who sat on the sidelines to make a difference in the game.

Either way, there was no suitable matchup for Houston to stop Illinois in the second half after holding the most explosive offense in collegiate basketball to 24 points. Despite them only having 22 in the first half and trailing by two points, there were no pushes to open the window and get on the scoreboard, with it going down as a fastbreak opportunity.

One of the eyebrow-raising stats was that the Cougars had no points at the free-throw line until the 3:27 mark of the second quarter, nearly 38 minutes without knocking down a free throw. Luckily, the freshman Kingston Flemings was able to break the scoreless streak from the line, but it was too late to matter.

The Cougars' bigs struggled to draw the whistle, as only two Illinois players reached the three-foul mark. That tells you how disciplined head coach Brad Underwood’s group was, and how unsuccessful Sampson’s unit was.

Even though these stats weren't the sole reason for the loss, it would've helped if Houston had engineered more points in these two areas.