With league play underway for every conference in college basketball, upsets have been aplenty this week. Eight teams in the AP Top 25 lost as favorites this week, including each of the top three teams in the country. Of those top teams to fall, one was #2 Houston — the last remaining unbeaten team in Division I. The Cougars dropped a tough contest on the road to Iowa State, 57-53.
It was a frustrating night for the Cougars, who demonstrated their strength on the defensive end but could not hit enough shots on the other end of the floor. Despite this loss, there is no reason for Houston to panic, even as a difficult Big 12 slate lies ahead.
Off night against a great defense
Iowa State boasts one of the elite defenses in the country — the third-best according to Ken Pomeroy's ratings — and they showed it against Houston. The Cyclones held the Cougars to a season-low 53 points on just 38% shooting on the night. ISU is also the best team in the country at preventing shots near the rim (per Haslametrics). By pushing the Cougars outside the paint, Iowa State forced them to become a jump-shooting team — something that is not Houston's strength.
Houston is 109th in three-point percentage (35.1%) and 188th in three-point attempt rate (37.2% of all field goal attempts). But against ISU, the number two team in the country took 52% of its shots from beyond the three-point arc, hitting just 26.9% of them.
An aggressive Cyclones team that ranks second in the country in turnovers forced per game also caused problems for the Cougars. A normally sure-handed Houston team that came into the night ranked 16th in the country in terms of protecting the ball on offense ended up with 16 turnovers in Iowa City.
The Big 12 has its fair share of great defenses, but no other opponent will offer a pack-line defense that forces turnovers at a high rate as Iowa State does. This was a tough matchup for head coach Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars, but Sampson and his team will learn a lot from this defeat early in conference play.
Winning on the road is incredibly difficult
Winning on the road in college basketball is hard — perhaps more so than in any other major American sport. Per college basketball analytics expert Evan Miyakawa, home teams in the top seven conferences are winning 66% of the time — up from 61% last year. That ratio has held true in the Big 12.
Home teams have won 9 of 14 contests (64.3%) in conference play for this league, and Houston is not the only elite Big 12 team to fall on the road this week. #9 Oklahoma lost at unranked TCU while #3 lost a shocker on the road to league newcomer Central Florida. Last year, Big XII teams won 64.4% of conference games at their home arena with only two teams finishing better than .500 on the road in league play — Baylor and Kansas both went 5-4 en route to top-three seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
Houston is new to the Big 12 and its contest against Iowa State was its first game away from home as a member of the conference. It was a tough lesson, but there are worse results than losing on the road to a team that is ranked number 15 in Ken Pomeroy's ratings. Houston will learn from this defeat and establish itself as a contender in the Big 12.
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