Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I saw your rankings for the final four teams, and you obviously have Houston fourth, and that's because at times, they struggle putting the ball in the hole, even in their elite eight final, there was a five minute stretch where they didn't score.
00:18That is who they are, Scott. It's been the nature of this team, but they have won some very big games doing that. I used an example when they played on the road at Texas Tech, a team you saw in the elite eight that was literally four minutes from the final four, that Houston scored their, I think it was their 44th point around the 16 minute mark.
00:41Then they scored their 46th point at about 12 or 13, and then they scored their 48th point at nine minutes, and they didn't lose the lead.
00:51That's because Texas Tech couldn't score at all. That's who they are, and so when you're playing against Houston, you have to be able and willing to fight through that.
01:03They're not going to make it easy for you. They're going to make it miserable. They're going to make it hard to get rebounds, hard to make initial passes. All of the things that you want to be comfortable doing, they make it hard, and if you are a team playing them, you can't surrender to the difficulty, to the frustration.
01:24If you surrender to the frustration of that, that's where they win.
01:29They're playing Duke, and I just think Duke is phenomenal. What they did defensively to Alabama was, we had seen them have 25 threes in the game before, and you knew as a basketball aficionado that you are, and that I believe I am, you knew they weren't getting 25 threes against that defense.
01:50And the way they play defense is spectacular. I think Duke and Houston are the two best defensive teams in America and have been all year. The difference for me is, Mike, is that Duke is able to score against good defenses. They're able to score more points than teams like Houston. They're able to put up more. They finished off Alabama, I mean, easily. It just doesn't matter who they play.
02:16Yeah, Duke is a great offensive basketball team, but they haven't had to deal with this before. I mean, Auburn's very good defensively, and they came into Cameron and North Stadium, and the Devils were able to get the win, but this is a different level of defense that they're going against.
02:31And they know that, because actually, John Shire, two years ago, his first year, he won it against somebody that was going to make it difficult, and they chose Houston, and Houston agreed to the scrimmage in Houston, and they learned a lesson in that game, in that scrimmage, a private scrimmage, that they can make things really hard for you.
02:53It was different then, because they had Jamal Shedd, and he was as good against the ball as any guard's been in the last 10 years or so, but this team beats you in other ways defensively. They make it hard to make the initial pass to the wing. They don't allow offensive rebounds. They contest everything inside.
03:11I watched J.T. Toppin, who was an All-American for us, second teamer, go against them for Texas Tech and basically say, nope, I'm not going inside anymore. No fun. I don't want to do it. I mean, he didn't say it literally, but he said it with his play. He wanted no part of anything that happened within six, eight feet of the goal from about the 10-minute mark of that game on, and it was a big difference in why Houston was able to win on the road at Tech.