{"id":372264,"date":"2025-11-11T20:01:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T20:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372264\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T20:01:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T20:01:18","slug":"oakland-suits-up-at-houston-for-second-straight-date-with-no-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/372264\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland suits up at Houston for second straight date with No. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston<\/a> is ranked No. 1 this early in the season for the first time in program history.<\/p>\n

Oakland<\/a> comes calling on Wednesday knowing all too well what facing the top-ranked team in the nation takes out of a team.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, the Cougars climbed to No. 1 on Nov. 28, 2022.<\/p>\n

But Houston (2-0) catapulted past Purdue, last week’s top-ranked team, which still received 36 first-place votes this week compared to 18 for the Cougars.<\/p>\n

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson’s team claimed the top spot because it had more No. 2 selections by pollsters than the Boilermakers.<\/p>\n

Oakland (0-2) will play a different No. 1 team in consecutive games.<\/p>\n

The Golden Grizzlies lost at Purdue 87-77 on Friday night. They fell at then-No. 7 Michigan 121-78 in the season opener on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n

“I think we play the Pistons after that,” Oakland coach Greg Kampe joked of the early-season gauntlet, including Wednesday’s game at Houston.<\/p>\n

The Cougars are coming off a 65-48 win Saturday against Towson at home behind freshman guard Kingston Flemings’ 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting from the field.<\/p>\n

Sampson commented on Houston’s shortcomings in the game, including missing 24 of 32 shots from 3-point range.<\/p>\n

“We had a lot of guys do some good things, but we’re missing so many shots,” Sampson said. “It’s hard to get separation.”<\/p>\n

Joseph Tugler had 15 points, eight rebounds and five steals, but Sampson was critical of the overall play of the junior forward.<\/p>\n

Tugler had three turnovers and tied for the team lead with 14 shots attempted, making half of them.<\/p>\n

“Just about any possession Jo’s involved in, he’s going to make somebody happy,” Sampson said. “It’s either me or the other (opponent) coach. Somebody’s going to be happy.<\/p>\n

“He’s going to do something to help them, or he’s going to do something to help us. The good news is, most of the time, he does it to help us.”<\/p>\n

Oakland was tied at halftime with Purdue, which pulled away behind 13 buckets from 3-point distance.<\/p>\n

Ziare Wells led the Golden Grizzlies with 21 points and 12 rebounds.<\/p>\n

His performance on the boards helped Oakland outrebound Purdue 39-37.<\/p>\n

“It was a high level, intense, powerful, physical basketball game that was played by two really good teams,” Kampe said. “We had our chances and we should really be proud … we took it right in the chest (regarding Purdue’s 3-point shooting) and we kept on going.”<\/p>\n

Sampson mentioned he is not concerned about Houston’s rebounding ability despite Towson tying the Cougars with 35 boards. Chris Cenac finished with a game-high 13 rebounds for Houston.<\/p>\n

“That might be the most insignificant stat of the night — who gets more rebounds or not, in the second game of the year,” Sampson said. “I’m more interested in the offensive rebounds.”<\/p>\n

Houston had 12 offensive rebounds, including four each by Cenac and Tugler.<\/p>\n

Oakland relies heavily on its starting lineup.<\/p>\n

Wells, Nassim Mashhour, Tuburu Naivalurua, Brody Robinson and Isaac Garrett each played at least 33 minutes against Purdue and only two reserves played more than one minute.<\/p>\n

All five starters scored in double figures with Mashour contributing 15 points and five rebounds and Naivalurua 11 points and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston is ranked No. 1 this early in the season for the first time in program history. Oakland…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":347349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[2076,4345,2500,179252,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-372264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-cougars","11":"tag-oakland-golden-grizzlies","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115532850029884769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}