Herd Insider Magazine - Official website. Cover Marshall Sports since 1998

HOUSTON, Texas—Marshall travelled to the Lone Star State with a three-game losing streak in its back pocket , two players left back at home with injuries and a third, senior Tyler Wilkerson, hobbled with a sprained ankle and out of the starting lineup.

The Herd forgot to pack its best game as well, as the Houston Cougars turned 22 takeaways from the Herd into 26 points and Aubrey Coleman lit up the Herd for 37 points in an 81-66 Houston win on Saturday night.

Houston (11-9, 4-3 C-USA) defeated Marshall (15-6, 4-3 C-USA) to drop the Herd to its fourth straight loss in as many games. The Herd fell into a tie with the Cougars for fifth in the Conference USA men’s standings.

“We need to learn bounce back from tough losses,” said Marshall head coach Donnie Jones. “We are feeling sorry for ourselves. We need to learn from this and show our toughness and fight as we move forward.

Tyler Wilkerson played on a sprained ankle, and scored six points with six rebounds in 81-66 loss at Houston- HI File Photo.

"I’m very disappointed in our team tonight,” said Jones. “There have been very few times when I could say we didn’t show up to play. As a coach, that’s your worst fear. We’ve got as basketball team that is feeling sorry for itself.”

Coleman, Division I’s leading scorer at 25.6 points per game, had his second-straight 35-plus point game against the Herd, scoring 38 last year in the Houston loss at Huntington, Marshall’s first win over the Cougars.

But there would be no two in a row as an early two-point Marshall lead dissolved in a 10-2 Houston run. Led by Coleman (who recorded just nine points in the first half), the Cougars mounted a 12-2 run that pushed the advantage to 22-11 with 8:34 to play in the stanza.

The Cougars took a 32-27 advantage into halftime, but MU had no answers for the Cougars in the second half either.

Maurice McNeil scored the first four of six points to start the second half for Houston as the Cougars led 38-29 lead to start. The Cougars would lead by as much as 20 during the second half at 55-35, before moving through the Herd for the win by 15 points.

In fact, it was going so well for the Cougars in the second half, Kendrick Washington threw the basketball up in the air at the end of the game and the ball went through for three to set the final score at 81-66.

Coleman hit 11-of-23 from the field, just 1-of-5 from three and 14-of-17 at the free throw line, with 28 points coming in the second half on 7-of-12 shooting and 13-of-15 at the line.

Lutz led the Herd with 13 points, nailing 3-of-5 from three. Pitts scored 12 points and grabbed a career high nine rebounds to go along with six assists, but the Herd point guard had eight of the 22 turnovers for Marshall.

Junior college transfer Antonio Haymon was one player who Jones singled out for his seasons-best playing time.

“Antonio Haymon has learned some playing time, and I told him he could move into the starting lineup for us,” said Jones. “We got to make some changes in our lineup, we got to find out what guys want to compete and which guys want to feel sorry for themselves.”

Haymon scored a season high 12 points and grabbed a season best eight rebounds in place of Wilkerson, who played 19 minutes but hit only 1-of-9 from the field and 4-of-5 from the line for six points.

“We couldn’t practice very hard with Tyler out two days, not sure if he could play,” said Jones, noting the absence of Tirrell Baines and Cam Miller from the team for knee and foot injuries, respectively. “We probably asked him to do some things we shouldn’t have. He was 1-of-9 from the field, and missed four or five give-me’s around the basket.

“What we need is his leadership on the floor, and we didn’t have that tonight. And we turned the ball over too much tonight, Pitts has nine turnovers, he didn’t lead our team at all. We’ve got to get back to work.”

Hassan Whiteside scored 10 points, posted eight rebounds and blocked four shots. But for one of the few games this season, Houston out-blocked Marshall as a team, 5-to-4.

Whiteside also had five turnovers and was out-rebounded by his own point guard as well as Coleman, who led Houston and all players with 13 rebounds. Marshall as a team was plus 13 in rebounds.

“I don’t’ want to take away from Houston, but it was our guys that had no energy tonight,” said Jones. “It’s not been going their way for three games in a row. We have got to learn to deal with success, then deal with adversity when it comes back.”

The toughest five-game stretch possibly in MU history – WVU, UAB, Memphis, at Houston and at Tulsa – continues in Oklahoma on Wednesday night.

“It’s going to be our toughest challenge. We’ll learn from this, regroup and go in there and fight,” said Jones.

NOTES--The Marshall coaching staff participated in the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Coaches vs. Cancer Suites and Sneakers awareness weekend… All members of the Herd staff wore white sneakers as part of the collaborative effort of the American Cancer Society and the NABC to demonstrate their support for the American Cancer Society and its vision of a world without cancer…With the insertion of Nigel Spikes into the starting lineup in place of Tyler Wilkerson, Marshall used its seventh different starting combination of the season...Former NBA head coach and Houston grad Don Chaney sat courtside during the game…Also in attendance at the game was former Marshall three-point deadeye, Keith Veney, who set the NCAA record with 15 threes in a Herd game against Morehead State in 1996-97…John Houston, the UH trainer, was a Marshall trainer back in the late 1990s.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."