Last Thursday evening a national TV audience watched Southern Mississippi rally from an 8-point deficit late in the fourth quarter to overcome a spirited University of Houston squad and win in overtime, 29-35. The Cougars, playing on a short week of rest and decimated by injuries, played with just enough heart to win but made just enough mistakes to lose. While their better-than-expected performance gave the dwindling cadre of Cougar faithful hope, especially coming on the heels of a disappointing 41-14 loss to Memphis a few days before, the end result was Houston’s fifth loss of the season and their seventh loss in ten games. The Coogs’ undermined their bid to upset the Golden Eagles in Hattiesburg by committing numerous penalties and playing horribly on special teams.
This would have been a huge win for the tortured UH program, if they could have pulled it off. It’s hard for teams to bounce back from games like last Thursday’s, where the underdog gets oh-so-close but can’t find away to put it away. I’ve seen it happen to the Coogs before, where they play beyond their abilities, come up short, and are unable to recover from the hard-fought loss.
In late October of 2000, for example, when 14th-ranked Southern Mississippi came to town, the Cougars were struggling with a 3-4 record (with all three UH victories by a combined six points). The Coogs put everything they had into an attempted upset of the Golden Eagles, but came up short in a heart-breaking 3-6 loss. Houston never bounced back from the anguish and lost their final three games by a combined score of 56-135 on their way to a 3-8 season. The following year, the winless Cougars made a bid to defeat a decent Cincinnati squad, and even held a 28-17 lead over the Bearcats into the fourth quarter. However, Cincinnati rallied to win, 29-28. The Cougars could not put the sting of the close loss behind them and were uncompetitive for the remainder of the season, which was the first winless season in UH football history.
Will this time be different? Will the Coogs be able to bounce back from this loss and remain competitive for the remainder of this difficult season? Or will this loss demoralize them to the point that they pack it in? The only way to find out is to see how they fare against TCU in Fort Worth two Saturdays from now. One thing that does work in the Coogs’ favor is that this is a bye week, meaning that they have an extra week for the sting of Southern Miss game to fade. The injury-plagued team also gets an extra week to heal…
(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)
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