Cougars, ’Cats to face off for title at Amway
The frustration was clear on Rob Gray’s face. The Houston point guard watched as another shot rimmed out of the basket. Yet, like all great shooters, the redshirt senior knew to keep firing away and eventually his shots would drop.
Gray’s confidence never wavered and he scored 24 of his game-high 33 points in the second half, helping lead No. 21 Houston (26-6) to a 77-74 win over No. 11 Wichita State in the semifinals of the American Athletic Conference Tournament at Amway Center Saturday.
The Cougars will take on top-seeded Cincinnati today at 3:30 p.m. on CBS. The Bearcats knocked off Memphis 70-60 earlier in the day.
Wichita State (25-7) must now wait until this evening to find out where the Shockers will play in the NCAA Tournament. Gregg Marshall’s team almost certainly will earn an at-large bid.
It was Gray’s fifth career game with 30-plus points. He started the contest 2 of 8 from the field, including 0 of 3 from the 3-point line in the
first half.
“Yesterday, I went 0-for-5 from the 3 and then the first half I went 0-for-3 from the 3. So when the first one fell, it relieved me of a lot of pressure,” Gray said. “I don’t know the first 3 I hit, I think it put us up maybe one or two. So I kind of got my swag back from beyond the arc.”
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson could sense his young superstar was pressing early on.
“I didn’t like the way he started the game so I took him out but Rob’s one of those kids that always responds because he’s a winner,” Sampson said. “Winners sometimes they just need reminding, but I know what we have there.”
After hitting the first basket of the game, Wichita State went cold from the field, missing its next six shots. At one point, the Shockers went about four minutes without a bucket as sloppy play plagued the team.
Houston, on the other hand, missed its first three shots before settling down. The Cougars attacked the rim early, with guard Corey Davis Jr. scoring 10 points in the first 11 minutes. He finished with 19 points.
For their part, the Shockers remained resilient despite their shooting woes. The team chipped away at a nine-point deficit, getting as close as six points at intermission mostly due to the charity stripe. Wichita State was a perfect 13-of-13 from the free-throw line.
Landry Shamet’s bucket snapped a shooting slump of more than six minutes going back to the end of the first half. Shamet followed it up with back-toback 3-pointers, helping the Shockers shoot their way out of a slump.
The Wichita State sophomore finished with a team-high 19 points, including four 3-pointers. He was one of four Shockers to finish in double figures.
Shamet and Gray battled back and forth throughout much of the second half, with the teams trading leads during the final nine minutes.
“He’s a good player. Multi-dimensional, especially when he’s shooting it well like he was tonight,” Shamet said of Gray. “He’s a hell of a player — first team all-conference for a reason — and we just didn’t defend him well enough and he made some big plays down the stretch. And we knew that’s what he does and credit to him.”
Bearcats win
Cincinnati players said they were well aware that Memphis guard Jamal Johnson could fill up a basketball hoop. Fortunately for the No. 8 Bearcats, they finally figured out a way to stop him from doing so Saturday.
The Bearcats were sleeping on Johnson a little bit in the early going and his first-half 3-pointers boosted Memphis to a double-digit lead by halftime. Challenged at halftime by head coach Mick Cronin, Cincinnati (29-4) came out on a defensive mission in the second and the Bearcats limited Memphis to just five field goals in the final 20 minutes, rallying past the Tigers 70-60 in a semifinal game of the American Athletic Conference Tournament at Amway Center.
“Well, it was a tale of two halves. We really played great the first half and really, because of Cincinnati’s intensity in the second half, we just didn’t seem to match it,” Memphis coach Tubby Smith said.
Led by Johnson, Memphis was blistering the nets in that first half on offense and matching Cincinnati’s power game on defense. The Tigers hit 52 percent of their floor shots (14 of 27) in the first half with Johnson going 5 of 5 for 17 points by the break.
“When you let a guy like that just get comfortable, the rim gets bigger and he lit it up,” Cincinnati forward and AAC player of the year Gray Clark said. “So second half we just tried to adjust, not let him get comfortable looks and play together … don’t back away from him at all; make it a harder shot.”
Not only was Memphis (21-13) rolling along offensively, but the Tigers were taking a cue from Cincinnati in getting physical underneath the basket. Memphis outrebounded Cincinnati 18-13 in the first half and the Bearcats missed 18 shots (12 of 30) before the intermission.
“Memphis played really well. They have won seven of their last eight. They made some really hard shots in the first half,” Cronin said.
“... Obviously [at halftime] I said we might not want to let Jamal Johnson keep teeing it up, and thinking he’s going to miss. I mean Jacob [Evans] was all over him to start the second half and his miss went halfway down and out. … When a guy’s on fire like that, you can make the adjustment, not let him shoot or you can let him shoot you out of the tournament and you go home tonight.”