Emanuel Sharp scored 18 points and second-seeded Houston delivered an 18-0 knockout punch in the first half to sail to an 88-57 victory over 10th-seeded Texas A&M on Saturday in a South Region second-round contest at Oklahoma City.
Chris Cenac Jr. registered 17 points and nine rebounds and Milos Uzan added 15 points for the Cougars (30-6), who will face third-seeded Illinois in next week’s Sweet 16 in Houston.
Mercy Miller added 12 points as the Cougars notched their fifth consecutive 30-win campaign and reached the Sweet 16 for the seventh straight season. The only program with a longer streak this century was Gonzaga, which made nine straight Sweet 16 appearances from 2015-24.
“Everybody’s got a style. We have a style. Texas A&M has a style … It’s how you do what you do,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said.
“I thought our guys did a great job of attacking the rim,” Sampson added.” We didn’t want to take as many threes today, although the ones we got were really good looks. … I thought if we get to the rim, we could get second and third shots.”
Josh Holloway was the only scorer in double figures for the Aggies (22-12) with 12 points off the bench. Leading scorer Rashaun Agee was limited to seven points.
The Cougars connected on 44.1% of their field-goal attempts, including 8 of 31 from 3-point range (25.8%). Houston held a commanding 46-29 rebounding edge and grabbed 19 on the offensive glass.
Texas A&M shot just 34.6% from the field, including 6 of 24 from behind the arc (25%). This was the second time in the past three NCAA Tournaments that the Aggies were eliminated in the second round by Houston.
“We knew we had to play a really good game,” Aggies coach Bucky McMillan said. “Houston is a really good team, they can go win this whole thing. They made tough shots. They did a great job rebounding. They controlled the pace. My hats off to Houston, but my hats off to our guys for a remarkable season even though we didn’t make it happen today.”
The Aggies were within 25-24 after a 3-pointer by Zach Clemence with 7:43 left in the first half.
But Texas A&M missed 12 straight field-goal attempts and went 6:34 without scoring as Houston turned a one-point lead into a 43-24 advantage.
Cenac scored six of the final eight points during the run, including two free throws to cap it.
“Yeah, I think it’s when the coaches told us to stop settling and get to the basket,” Sharp said of the run. “We have guys that can get in the paint, and I think we used that to our advantage. We were also getting stops on defense. We were flying around.”
Pop Isaacs made two free throws with 1:09 remaining to end the scoring drought for the Aggies. Rylan Griffen’s runner with 28 seconds left halted the field-goal famine.
The Cougars led 46-28 at halftime and then came out charging in the second half. Kingston Flemings and Sharp each converted three-point plays and Cenac added a jumper to make it a 26-point lead just 42 seconds into the half.
The contest remained one-sided the rest of the way and the lead reached 30 on Miller’s turnaround with 1:17 to play.
–Field Level Media
