Miners Collapse in C-USA Championship
A week ago, the Houston Cougars were in a bad way. Aubrey Coleman, the team's star forward and the leading scorer in all of Division I, scored 38 points. Unfortunately it was too little too late, as the Cougars erased a 17 point deficit but still lost, 79-76. Add to that the fact that the loss came against Tulane, a team that had lost 14 of their last 16 games.
The loss was Houston's fourth in their last six games, and certainly their most demoralizing. It quickly turned them from a team with a chance to a team just hoping to not embarrass themselves in the Conference USA Tournament.
They got an easy win to open the tournament, making sure to show up in a blowout win over lowly East Carolina. That only earned them a date with regular season runner-up Memphis. Sure, Memphis was their last truly impressive win (92-75), but that was more than two weeks prior.
Somehow, the Cougars held on to beat Memphis by one, 66-65, then Southern Mississippi. It led them to a shot at the conference title and an automatic tournament bid, but it also meant facing the C-USA regular season champion, the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP).
With five minutes left in the game, Coleman - he of the 26 points per game to lead the country, was having a truly awful day, shooting 2-of-17 from the field. Fortunately for him his teammate Kelvin Lewis - the only other Cougar to average more than eight points per game in the regular season - caught fire.
At that same point in time, Lewis has 25 points on 10-of-13 shooting, including five three-pointers, and the Cougars were down 67-64 after a pair of UTEP free throws. Later, Lewis earned his last points of the game with one last long-range shot, and after a timeout, Houston made another three to give themselves a 74-70 lead.
UTEP only made one basket in the last two minutes, and now Houston is the C-USA champion for the first time in 18 years. Some might view them as a "one-and-done" type team, but with the nation's leading scorer, and now a second player in Lewis that defenses must respect, the Cougars just might make some noise when the Madness continues next week.
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