Corey Davis, Jr. went off for six treys, four in the first half, on the way to a 26 point performance to lead three Houston players in double-figures in their 99-65 win over feisty ECU Wednesday night in Williams Arena.
But the big story was Houston benefitting from a technical foul spree early in the second half that led to a pair of ejections that quickly added to the Cougars’ working margin and largely put the game out of reach.
ECU guard Isaac Fleming was called for a delay of game after holding the ball a little too long after a made basket. Shortly afterward he was rung up with a technical foul for reacting negatively to the call. It wasn't long before Shawn Williams was tossed after a flagrant foul.
Pirate head coach Joe Dooley got rung up with a technical for his reaction after the first technical and was subsequently tossed after going backing back and forth with the official that called the first technical on him.
A water bottle or two was tossed on the court and at least one student was ejected from the coliseum.
Suddenly (6)Houston had turned what was a still a somewhat workable 45-31 halftime lead into a 61-37 route just three minutes into the second half. ECU then held their own for a stretch, but the Houston lead stayed relatively the same at 69-46 with 11:45 to go, putting the game largely out of reach.
“I thought we got off to a decent start and a decent start to the second half and then things went totally haywire. I’ll take partial responsibility and I think there are some other parties who should take some partial responsibility,” ECU head coach Joe Dooley said afterward, “I’m very unhappy that our fans had to witness it. It's the first time in 31 years that I’ve gotten tossed. I think our guys lost their composure a little bit and you can’t do that against a top ten team.”
“I definitely think I deserved the first technical. I was told by (referee) Tony Greene to stand there and then “sparky” got me on the baseline,” Dooley said, “I’ve never seen him before, but he got me on the baseline and I was gone.”
Dooley said he felt that there was plenty of blame to go around.
“I think there were a number of people who lost control tonight. I’ll be quite honest about it, I’m sick of it and we’re not going to get sand kicked in our face anymore. Stand up and play the right way. Referee the right way. All parties. We need to play better, they need to ref better. They were on the free throw line for an hour and a half.”
But overall the Pirate head coach was highly complementary of the play of the 6th ranked Cougars who really put on a show shooting the basketball from long range with regularity.
“Obviously they shot the ball well in the first half. I didn’t see much of the second half, said Dooley, “Great, great team. I think they have all the pieces to be a final four caliber team.”
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson weighed in on what proved to be a strange night in Minges Coliseum.
"When you're in this game long enough, you're going to see a bunch of stuff. I thought there was some frustration," Sampson said, "I didn't see what precipitated the calls. I didn't see it. I did see one. One of the technicals was for sure was warranted but some of the others I may have been blocked out."
Sampson was asked what he gets out of a lopsided affair like the one Wednesday night.
"I know we're 27-1 but being 14-1 is more important. Our goal is to win the conference championship and that's what we get out of it, I think this late in the year you don't get overly analytical one way or the other," Sampson told PirateIllustrated.com, "You know your team by now, The strength of our team IS our team. I don't know that it's a great team. We've been able to beat just about everybody we've played. They're tough kids, we can defend. I didn't think our defense was great tonight."
Corey Davis got Houston off to a fast start to open the game, hitting four of his first five shots from the arc. Thus, Houston held a ten point 28-18 lead midway into the half.
The Cougars maintained a thirteen point 38-25 edge with 3:30 to go before halftime, hitting 15 of their first 24 shots including 7 of 13 from three-point land while limiting ECU to what would normally still be pretty adequate at 47 percent shooting overall.
After the technicals and ejections, the Pirates did go on a bit of a mini-run midway into the second half behind baskets from Dimitri Spasojevic, Isaac Fleming, Seth LeDay and Jayden Gardner that briefly trimmed the Cougar lead to 73-56.
But a Nate Hinton trey from the corner, Corey Davis's bomb from the top of the arc and a Chris Harris bucket in the paint quickly had Houston back up by thirty. Then two Cedrick Alley baskets with five minutes to go put the game on ice.
ECU got a team high 17 points from LeDay who largely held his own in the paint. Jayden Gardner scored 14 points to go along with five rebounds and Isaac Fleming crafted another quality outing at the point, minus the technical foul, with 13 points and seven assists while only committing three turnovers.
“I’ve never seen that many large fouls in two minutes and thirty seconds. It was ridiculous,” LeDay said, “We just have to try to take the good things that happened and move on and try to represent this university and get three wins in these last three games.”
“Coach Chillious told us to just keep fighting and stay together and we tried our best to keep doing that,” said Gardner “We’ve never really seen anything like this before. We just had to stick together and do what we do. We just wanted to play basketball. That was it.”
The Pirates hit 49 percent from the the floor including 38 percent shooting from three-point land but the big problem for ECU was 46.4 percent Houston shooting from the arc. The Cougars made 60.3 percent overall and enjoyed a 33-19 difference on the glass.
ECU next tees it up again in AAC action on March 3 when they hit the road to take on the Golden Hurricane in a 4 o’clock game in Tulsa.
Catch PI Postgame reactions and tonight's final statistics below.
PI POST GAME: ECU'S JOE DOOLEY REACTS AFTER HOUSTON GAME
PI POST GAME: HOUSTON COACH KELVIN SAMPSON
