YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS

Maybe UH football is the only program that got it right

Maybe UH football is the only program that got it right
Photo by Jonathan Bachman / Stringer/Getty Images.

Before you read this article, full disclosure here: I am good friends with UH head coach Dana Holgorsen. I have been for a long time. Do I want to see him win? Yes. But I wanted to see Major Applewhite win too. I liked him. And I liked Tony Levine and Tom Herman. I'm still friends with Kevin Sumlin. I liked Art Briles and Dana Dimel (although I knew he wasn't going to win much). My relationship with UH coaches goes back to Kim Helton who was great to me when I was one of the new guys in town.

I also like UH AD Chris Pezman a lot and I think President Khator is a superstar. I'm a big fan. I guess you could say I'm a UH fan. Maybe I'm not supposed to be because I'm in the media but I don't care. I want to see them win.

So when they got hit with a scud missile in the Houston Chronicle after UH shut down the football program last week I was pissed. Just three short days later in that same paper Jerome Solomon wrote a piece on how all of college football could be and maybe should be shut down.

Wait…what? Which is it? You can't have it both ways. Either it was good to shut it down or it wasn't.

That first piece condemning the leadership was written by Joseph Duarte who's the Coogs beat writer. I've known Joseph a long time. He's a good guy but what he wrote can undermine the program.

My main contention with his article is this sentence:

"If you rushed student-athletes back to campus with a flimsy, inadequate and ill-conceived plan, why should parents and fans have trust in anything you do or say moving forward?"

First of all, they didn't rush the players back. All of college football came back at the same time, June 1st.

Secondly, the plan was a 35-page document put together by 21 staffers and four doctors. It was neither flimsy, inadequate nor ill-conceived. Smart, concerned people worked on it. It apparently didn't meet Joseph's standards.

His main objection was that it didn't include the testing of all players on June 1st, the day the student-athletes arrived. He says UH was the only FBS school in the state that didn't test all their athletes that day. I haven't asked the other schools. I'll trust he's accurate there.

It is true that UH did not test all the players when they arrived. The plan was to test anyone who had a cough, fever, sniffle, sore throat, diarrhea or any other symptom however remote. They did and they were all negative.

Then just five days later the players were off on a long weekend which included trips to Galveston, the protests and funeral of George Floyd and wherever else 18 to 21-year olds chose to go. On June 11th they had six positive tests. On June 12th they shut down the football program.

This past weekend The University of Texas reported 13 positive tests, Clemson had 23. Texas A&M says their positive tests are on the rise. LSU has 30 players in quarantine.

30.

All those programs are still active.

UH had six positives and shut down their program.

Instead of being criticized, UH should be lauded for putting their student-athletes ahead of their football program. You think Dana doesn't want his guys working out together, building comradery, having player-led practices? Of course he does. While UH players are at home, every other program in the country is spending valuable time together, the positive tests be damned.

What's become quite clear is that the initial tests were useless. Ask Clemson. They had all those negative tests on June 1st, and they have 23 positive tests now. You'll be hard-pressed to find any school that doesn't have more positives than it did on June 1st. If they say they don't, they're probably lying. The fact is that unless you incarcerate and isolate your players from the rest of society they will be at risk of contracting the virus.

Was Dana supposed to tell his players they couldn't protest or go to the funeral? Good luck with that.

What really stings though is the attack on the leadership at UH for not protecting the athletes and how parents and fans can't trust them now. That's a line that opposing recruiters will use in living rooms all over the state and that's a shame because the exact opposite is true.

While other programs continue to put their athletes at risk with up to dozens of players testing positive, UH acted swiftly and decisively in shutting down its program, sending kids home, hopefully out of harm's way.

Later in the article Duarte took another shot at Pezman and Khator saying they had been "redshirting this spring." He thinks they disappeared at the most crucial time because they wouldn't answer his phone calls when he was looking for a quote for his piece.

What he may find from now on is that his phone calls to them will be going from redshirt straight into the transfer portal.

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Rockets extend winning streak to 10. Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images.

The Houston Rockets didn’t care that they beat an Oklahoma City squad that was missing its best player, All-Star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

The Rockets celebrated loudly in the locker room after escaping with a win at one of the toughest venues in the league. Jalen Green scored 37 points and Houston won its 10th straight game, defeating the Thunder 132-126 in overtime on Wednesday night.

“It was lit, it was lit,” Green said. “Everybody was happy, celebrating, screaming. I mean, we fought for that one. We worked hard.”

Rockets coach Ime Udoka said it’s all about stacking victories.

“Ten in a row is 10 in a row, regardless if Shai is out or whatever the case may be,” Udoka said. “But it’s hard to do in the NBA. The guys are proud of that effort, and well deserved.”

Amen Thompson had 25 points and 15 rebounds and Dillon Brooks added 20 points for the Rockets.

Gilgeous-Alexander, who was out with a bruised right thigh, ranks third in the league with 30.4 points per game.

Josh Giddey matched a career-high with 31 points for the Thunder, one night after scoring a season-high 25 in a win at New Orleans. Jalen Williams added 23 points and 10 assists for Oklahoma City, which entered the night a half game behind the Western Conference-leading Denver Nuggets.

Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault made no excuses for the loss.

“Every night, there’s a combination of things you can control and things you can’t,” he said. “You want to be a team that looks at the stuff you can control. We just never want to turn a page and chalk an entire game up to luck or shot-making or refs or anything like that. You want a team that takes full accountability for what we can. We do that after wins, we do that after losses and we’ll do that after this one.”

The final minutes of regulation were hectic. Giddey hustled to the ball and got a shot to bounce in while sitting on the floor a few feet in front of the free-throw line, putting the Thunder ahead 103-102 with just under four minutes remaining.

Oklahoma City’s Williams made a contested 3-pointer with 4.7 seconds remaining to tie the score at 112. Green’s layup at the buzzer rolled away, forcing overtime.

“Had a decent look at a shot, but we felt OK, put it behind us and we just went after it,” Udoka said.

Brooks hit two 3-pointers early in the extra period to put the Rockets in control.

“It was big when Dillon came out and hit those two, and then we guarded even better until the end of the overtime,” Udoka said.

The game had a little extra flair from the start. Confetti from a previous event rained down on the floor right before the tip.

The Thunder trailed by double digits in the first quarter, but rallied to lead 50-49 at halftime.

The Thunder led 69-62 when Giddey fouled Jabari Smith Jr. Giddey tried to help him up and Brooks pushed Giddey away and was issued a technical foul. It was Brooks’ 14th of the season, putting him two short of a one-game suspension.

Oklahoma City took an 85-80 lead into the fourth quarter.

UP NEXT

Rockets: Visit the Utah Jazz on Friday night.

Thunder: Host the Phoenix Suns on Friday night.

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