Men's Basketball loses to Houston in overtime

The SMU Mustangs held a 19-point lead at one point in the game versus Houston on Saturday afternoon at Moody Coliseum, but fell in an overtime heartbreaker 84-80 to their C-USA rivals.

“We are what we are. I’m proud of these kids. They’re getting better and we got them playing a lot of minutes, but I told them we’ve got to go Monday at practice and man up and try to continue to get better. It’s hard seeing their faces like that with disappointment,” SMU head coach Larry Brown said.

Even with the Mustangs getting 21 points and eight rebounds from Jalen Jones and Nick Russell adding 22 points and five assists, the Mustangs could not stop the Cougars in the second half and overtime from getting hot.

The Cougars, after shooting just 33 percent from the field and 16 percent from three-point range in the first half, shot close to 70 percent from the field in the second half and 100 percent from the field in overtime.

“You might be able to say that, but we can’t have any excuses. The rotation has been the same since the beginning of the year so we should be used to it by now,” SMU forward Shawn Williams said about giving up 66 points after the first half.

The Mustangs had held the Cougars to just 18 points in the first half, dominating in every fashion, but that success was short lived in the second half. The Mustangs allowed the Cougars to take over the game and control the tempo.

The Mustangs’ bench struggled and did not score a single point. In his post game press conference Brown stressed that it is tough on the starters to play the amount of minutes they are playing when the bench isn’t producing.

“We forget how we got a lead and that’s when you’re dealing with two guards who have never played point guard before and they’ve come so far, they’re getting so much better and we got them playing too many minutes and you can see when we put on our bench why we do that,” Brown said about how the game fell a part.

Even with the Mustangs giving up the lead to the Cougars, the team battled back in front of a season-high 3,886 people in attendance. As the end of the second half was winding down, the Mustangs were able to get the ball to Jalen Jones after a half-court pass from Cannen Cunningham.

Jones then found Williams in the corner for a three-pointer that dropped as time expired, sending Moody into a frenzy.

The happiness was short-lived. SMU got down by six early in the extra period to the Cougars and never recovered. Coach Brown reiterated that this is the season to beat the Mustangs.

“They better get us now because we’ve got a lot of pay backs,” Brown said.

The loss drops the Mustangs to 2-6 in C-USA play and 12-11 overall. The Mustangs face Memphis at Moody on Wednesday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m.