The Houston Cougars came to Charlottesville with an opportunity to redeem themselves after blowing a lead late against Alabama last week.
Given a second chance, the fifth-ranked Cougars applied the lessons learned in that loss to hold off a late Virginia rally in a 69-61 win inside a loud John Paul Jones Arena Saturday afternoon.
Jarace Walker had 17 points and seven rebounds, and Marcus Sasser added 13 points for Houston, which had never beaten a second-ranked team before.
This game looked and felt nothing like a typical non-conference December contest. Instead, it had the intensity of an NCAA Tournament affair. The 14,000 sold-out crowd had a lot to do with that.
The Cougars, who collapsed late last Saturday at home against Alabama, blowing a 15-point lead, got off to a wobbly start here today.
Missing their first six shots from the floor, Houston fell behind 9-0 in the opening four minutes.
The Cougars never appeared unnerved, however.
Going on a 19-4 run, Houston (11-1) built a lead that they would never relinquish. The closest the Cavaliers (8-1) came in the second half was 30-28 as the roof appeared to be lifting in JPJ.
But just like that, Houston restored order in the gathering, leading by as many as 11.
Virginia mounted a threat late in the game, pulling to within six, but Tramon Walker and Walker canned jumpers to move the margin back to 11, as the Cougars avoided the type of collapse that led to the loss against No. 8 Alabama.
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said that although his team played North Carolina A&T Tuesday night, his club had been preparing mentally for Virginia since the Alabama game.
“Focusing, and playing with increased intensity for the complete game, that’s what we prepared for,” said Sampson.
After jumping out to the early 9-0 lead, Virginia’s offense was, well flat. Seemingly after UVA did make a couple of second-half runs, the Cougars answered with some demoralizing buckets.
Even with the loss to Alabama, the Cougars might just be the best team in the nation. Statistically, Houston is now ranked first by two analytics sites, KenPom and BartTorvik.
Entering today’s showdown, Virginia understood that to beat Houston, two things were key: creating and finding offense, and then shutting down the Cougars’ ability to create and make jump shots.
Neither happened with much consistency for UVA.
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