MEN’S BASKETBALL GAMEDAY

UCONN at No. 25 HOUSTON

When: Thursday, 9 p.m.

Where: Fertitta Center, Houston

Records: UConn 10-7, Houston 14-4

TV: ESPNU

Radio: UConn/IMG Sports Network, 97.9 FM-ESPN Hartford, WAVZ-New Haven (1300 AM), WICC-Brideport (600 AM), WINE-Danbury (940 AM), WGCH- Greenwich (1490 AM)

KEEP AN EYE ON

Houston rockets: The Cougars have won eight of their last nine, including an impressive, 65-54 victory at No. 16 Wichita State on Saturday.

“Just an excellent team,” Dan Hurley said of Houston. “In six years there under Kelvin (Sampson), they have established themselves and their culture as a championship-level program. Their identity is obviously toughness — they are a tremendous rebounding team, the best rebounding team we’ve played, and a very good team defensively. They have five excellent guards, the deepest collection of guards I’ve seen in the country this year. And the frontcourt rotation has athleticism, physicality, skill, shot-blocking. They just look like a complete team and their performance at Wichita State the other day was incredibly impressive.”

On the rebound: UConn has won the rebounding battle in its last three games, including against a pair of ranked foes (Wichita State and Villanova). But Houston provides a whole different challenge.

Entering this week, the Cougars led the nation in rebounding margin (plus-11.1) and were second nationally in both offensive rebounds per game (14.9) and offensive rebounding percentage (41.0). They were third in the nation with 42.9 rebounds per game.

Sophomore guard Nate Hinton is one of just two players to rank among the AAC’s top-3 in both offensive and defensive rebounding.

No sign-stealing from Sampson: On Tuesday night, Sampson was honored as Coach of the Year at the Houston Sports Awards. He beat out Bill O’Brien of the Texans, Tina Langley of Rice women’s basketball and ... A.J. Hinch, the former Astros manager who has since been fired for his involvement in sign-stealing a couple of seasons ago.

History lesson: Houston owns an 8-5 all-time record against the Huskies, including three straight wins. Their most recent victory was an 84-45 mauling in a second-round AAC tournament game that ended UConn’s season last March.

UConn’s last win over the Cougars came on March 10, 2017 in an AAC tournament semifinal game at the XL Center in Hartford.

The Huskies also won at Houston that season, one of their few road wins in league play over the past six seasons. This will be their first visit to the Fertitta Center, which re-opened last season. UConn didn’t play at Houston last season.