TU gets run over by No. 3 Houston

As ugly as the game was for Tulsa against No. 3 Houston, sadly, it was completely expected.

The Cougars showed why they are a juggernaut, destroying TU 89-50 Wednesday night in front of 4,807 fans at the Reynolds Center.

Tulsa (4-8, 0-1 AAC) has the look of a team that will struggle all season, like a team from the Jim King era of the late 1970's.

It has nothing to do with the coaching. First-year coach Eric Konkol's players play hard, but are overmatched. The cupboard was left bare for Konkol coming in.

"The overall stamina required to stay in the game against Houston is tremendous," Konkol said. "And not just trying to score against them, which is of course difficult, and has been for everybody.

"But I thought their passing, I thought their ability to share it, find shots - and they got it rolling and made some difficult shots, too. A well-rounded performance by them that we were just not able to stay in it."

Bryant Selebangue has been a terrific addition to the Golden Hurricane, and continued to be so against the Cougars, leading a spirited beginning to the game that had TU leading 8-5 after the first TV timeout with 15:53 left in the first half.

A juco transfer who was from Canada in high school, Selebangue was 5 of 5 from the field in the first half and led TU with 10 points at half. He finished with 13 points to be the only TU player in double figures, while also leading Tulsa with 9 rebounds.

TU played about as well as it could have in the first half, but still trailed 43-26 at halftime against a Houston team that was killing it on mid-range jumpers. The Cougars hit 18 of 31 shots (58.1 percent) from the field in the first half.

But that figure increased to 12 of 16 (75 percent) when including only 2-pointers in the first half. And the amazing part was that TU was playing decent to good defense.

Houston (13-1, 1-0) is just that good. The Cougars finished the game shooting 59 percent from the field.

The only question is why Houston was favored by only 20 points coming into the game.

But for the Cougars, it wasn't the excellence on offense that is important to Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson.

"We're not going to win championships with our offense," said Sampson. "But we are leading the nation in field goal percentage allowed and points allowed."

Houston was giving up only 49.8 points per game and allowing teams to shoot 32.7 percent from the field. Tulsa shot 33.9 percent from the field.

The normally balanced scoring attack of Houston was again that against TU. J'Wan Roberts led Houston with 15 points and 9 rebounds, including making 7 of 7 shots from the field. He came into the game shooting an amazing 65.1 percent.

Roberts was followed by Emanuel Sharp and Tramon Mark with 14 points apiece. Leading scorer Marcus Sasser, the only Cougar who averages in double figures this season at 16 points per game, finished with 12.

Konkol draws inspiration from Sampson's first team at Houston in 2015, which was a dreadful 13-19 against a weak schedule, including 4-14 in AAC play. That also included Houston going 0-3 against TU -- two of which were blowouts. NIT bound TU beat Houston 72-54 at the Reynolds Center that season.

Konkol has seen that Houston struggled back then, but the program has been built to last.

"We want to be a gritty and nasty tough program, similar to how they have done it," Konkol said of Houston. "We got a lesson in that tonight."