Still doggone good
UH continues to thrive at home despite limits to crowds by relying on its mental toughness
As the Houston Cougars made four straight 3-pointers to begin Sunday’s game against Central Florida, the reduced-capacity crowd inside Fertitta Center yelled in approval.
In past seasons, it was the type of offensive display that would prompt a sellout crowd to stand on its feet and reach deafening noise levels.
But what happens during a tideturning run or rim-rattling dunk in a global pandemic?
With Fertitta Center at about 25 percent capacity for home games this season, referee calls and coaching instructions can often be clearly heard. Socially distanced fans are scattered throughout the arena. Those who don’t stand up? They are cardboard cutouts placed to fill empty seats in the club level and rows closest to the court.
Just like most everyone else during an unprecedented college basketball season, the eighthranked Cougars (11-1, 6-1 American Athletic Conference) have been forced to adjust to playing before smaller crowds that have taken away some of the home-court advantage.
The wins, however, keep coming.
UH puts an 18-game home winning streak on the line Wednesday against Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane dealt the Cougars their only loss of the season, 65-64 on Dec. 29, on a pair of free throws by Brandon Rachal with one-tenth of a second remaining.
The 18 straight home wins give UH the sixth-longest active streak in
the nation behind Gonzaga (46), Liberty (31), Prairie View A&M (29), Oregon (28) and South Dakota State (27).
“We don’t want to lose any home games,” senior forward Justin Gorham said. “We hang our hat on that.”
In the last three-plus seasons, UH has been one of the nation’s toughest teams to beat at home, winning 56 of their last 59 games while playing at Texas Southern’s H&PE Arena and Fertitta Center.
A relocation was required during construction of UH’s new on-campus arena, which replaced Hofheinz Pavilion. The Cougars went 19-0 in the regular season at H&PE Arena in 2017-18 and part of the 2018-19 season. Since Fertitta Center opened, the Cougars are 37-3, a .925 winning percentage.
“I never felt like we had a home-court advantage at Hofheinz,” coach Kelvin Sampson said. “It was just a basketball game between two people that first year. I thought there was a bomb scare in that building at 7 o’clock. There was nobody there. Since we moved into Fertitta Center, we’ve had a home-court advantage.”
Sampson said there has been only one home game among UH’s eight this season in which he noticed the impact of not having a large home crowd.
“There was one game where I felt we really needed our fans. That was the Wichita State game,” Sampson said of a 70-63 win on Jan. 6, in which the Cougars rallied from a 10-point deficit in the second half. “That’s the only game I really noticed.
“I think mental toughness is a big part of our success over the years.
That’s something we emphasize. We put our kids in situations where there’s adversity. A lot of it is created in practice, and they have to respond to it. If they don’t respond the right way, we find out who can handle it and who can’t.”
To offset the lack of fans, Sampson said the Cougars rely on their bench to “bring the energy” throughout the game.
“We would love to have the fans to amp us up when we go on a big run or somebody makes a big play and it gets loud,” senior guard DeJon Jarreau added. “Shout-out to the ones that are there now and able to come in and help us make noise and be on our side. Shout-out to our team. The bench has been crazy.”
Sampson is familiar with how a home-court advantage can fuel a basketball program from his yearly trips with Oklahoma to Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse, regarded as one of the toughest places for opposing teams in college basketball. Earlier this month, No. 8 Texas beat the thirdranked Jayhawks 84-59 to match the most lopsided win by an opposing team in the 65-year history of the storied building.
“Those fans make a difference” Sampson said. “Does Texas beat Kansas by 30 with fans there? That’s the difference the fans make.”
UH has announced crowds of 1,859 for each home game this season, just slightly more than 26 percent capacity for the 7,035-seat Fertitta Center. Two of this season’s road games were played without fans — at Tulsa and a neutral-site game with Texas Tech in Fort Worth. A road game at SMU’s Moody Coliseum featured a “great crowd,” Sampson said, while part of the 1,476 in attendance for a Dec. 26 game at UCF was a large contingent of Coastal Carolina fans, visiting Orlando, Fla., for the Cure Bowl.
“I think it says something about our kids and their ability to stay focused,” Sampson said. “Bring your own energy. That’s what we all have to do. We are all the same in this deal. We are fighting the same battle. There’s nobody unique or special. We’ve all been disadvantaged in some way from a basketball perspective.”
With relatively subdued chants demanding a defensive stand and fewer signwaving fans to distract opposing players at the free-throw line, Gorham said the absence of packed arenas has “been different.”
“We’ve got to work through it and play our hearts out — with fans or without fans,” he said.