No.7 Houston basketball looks to continue its winning ways vs the Utah Utes at home and stay undefeated in conference play. Keep reading for the Houston vs Utah prediction.
Game information:
Teams: Houston (14-3, 6-0) and Utah (11-6, 3-3)
Tip-off: 5 p.m. CST
Watch: ESPN+
Listen: KPRC 950
This game was rescheduled from Tuesday night after severe winter weather in the Houston area.
Latest on Utah Basketball:
The Utes are tied with Houston’s last opponent, UCF for eighth in the Big 12 standings. Utah have now won their last three games coming into this matchup after a four game losing streak. Utah last beat BYU on the road 73-72 in overtime Saturday night. Junior forward Ezra Ausar put up 26 points vs BYU to lead the Utes on 73% shooting with six rebounds, two assists and two steals.
“Their length jumps out at you, how tall they are. Extremely good passing team, probably the best passing team in the Big 12, they average over 17 assists per game, that’s incredible,” Kelvin Sampson said.
Senior guard Gabe Madsen has been the leading scorer for Utah this season, averaging 15.8 PPG with Ausar in second averaging 11.2 PPG. Utes head coach Craig Smith is in his fourth year with the program and this is his 14th season overall coaching with Smith previously being at Utah State from 2018-2021.
Smith is 0-3 vs Houston in his career and 0-1 while at Utah. Utah’s head man is also 0-3 vs Kelvin Sampson. The Cougars have won both previous head to head meetings vs the Utes. Houston won the first meeting back in 1982 in Tokyo and most recently, won 76-66 in the Charleston Classic semifinals in 2023 last season. This will be the first time Utah will play in Houston as the first meeting as Big 12 rivals.
Latest on Houston Basketball:
The Cougars continue their steady climb back to the top of the AP poll, now ranked no.7 in the country. Houston enters this game after their hardest fought win of the season, on the road vs UCF in comeback fashion. After trailing the entire first half and down 38-30 at halftime, UH stormed back and won 69-68 on what ended up being a game winning layup from graduate forward J’Wan Roberts with 1.1 seconds left.
Houston continues to lead the nation in field goal percentage defense (35.6%), something they have done for the last four seasons as well. UH also tops the country in scoring defense (55 PPG), which they were first in last year.
As usual, Houston has low turnover numbers and is ranked fourth with just over nine turnovers a game. Junior point guard Milos Uzan has been a big part of that, as the Vegas native leads the country with a 4.10 assist-turnover ratio. Even after a bad shooting night vs UCF, junior guard Emanuel Sharp still leads the Big 12 in three point field goal percentage (45.9%) and also is second in the conference shooting 92.7% from the free throw line. Graduate guard Mylik Wilson also crossed 1000 points in his career on Saturday.
[…] the nation only behind Duke (12). The snowstorm in Houston clearly didn’t affect the Cougars, but Utah froze on offense with a season low 36 points, the fewest scored by the Utes in more than 13 years. […]