It felt safe to turn away from college basketball and focus on the NFL Playoffs after Purdue beat Maryland early Sunday afternoon. The day seemed done.
Then Temple ruined that plan.
The Owls shockingly upset No. 1 Houston 56-55 inside the Fertitta Center despite the Cougars closing as 19.5-point favorites. Just like that, Kelvin Sampson’s program has an ugly Quadrant-3 loss on its resume. FYI: No other team in the top five of the NET has lost a Quadrant-3 game.
“We could never make the big play,” Sampson said. “We needed a big shot.”
Houston actually had multiple potential game-winning shots in the final seconds against a Temple team that entered with an 11-9 record featuring losses to Wagner and Maryland Eastern Shore. Nothing fell, though, which is among the reasons the Cougars ended up shooting just 33.9% from the field. Another killer: Houston missed 10 of the 21 free throws it attempted while Temple finished 20-of-22 from the charity stripe.
“It’s frustrating for sure,” Sampson said. “As a team, when you start missing [free throws] like that, especially some of our younger guys, you start pressing, probably. Free throws can get mental like anything else. It’s not a fair fight when one team goes 20-for-22 and the other goes 11-for-21.”
The surprising loss caused Houston to drop from No. 1 to No. 6 in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where each of the top five teams — Purdue, Alabama, Kansas State, UCLA and Texas — all have more Quadrant-1 wins than the Cougars and resumes featuring zero losses outside of the first two quadrants. Houston’s next game is Wednesday at UCF. Based on the NET that currently has UCF ranked 56th, the contest will be a rare Quadrant-1 opportunity for Houston in an American Athletic Conference that rates as just the ninth-best league in the country.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
