Southern Miss
Houston
Eagles Top Cougars 74-69
2/19/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Feb. 19, 2007
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) - With its first winning record in six seasons already secure, Southern Miss is now looking to move up in the Conference USA standings and make a run at the postseason.
Jeremy Wise and Courtney Beasley scored 22 points apiece as the Golden Eagles beat Houston 74-69 on Monday night. The win was the 14th at home for Southern Miss (17-8, 7-5), one shy of the school record.
"It was another step for us, and in our growing process as a team," Southern Miss coach Larry Eustachy said. "It was a hard-fought game against a good team, and we need to be able to win games like that."
It was Southern Miss' third straight win. The Golden Eagles are now in a tie for third place in the league with Rice.
The Cougars (14-12, 8-4) were playing their third game in five days. They lost two of three.
Oliver Lafayette scored a career-high 30 points in the loss for Houston.
"We knew this would be a tough situation, with the number of games we faced in this stretch," Houston coach Tom Penders said. "We felt like we could hang around until the end and we might have a chance to steal it. But we just didn't do enough offensively to get it done."
With his first basket of the game, Wise set a freshman scoring record for most points in a season by a first-year player. He has 426 points.
"Maybe later that will mean something to me, but not really now," Wise said. "I'm just worried about winning, and we still have a chance to finish second in the conference."
After trailing 30-22 at halftime, Houston cut the deficit to one twice in the second half. The last time came with six minutes to play, but the Cougars never could pull even.
Wise made a steal and a layup and added two key free throws in the final 40 seconds.
Craig Craft's second 3-pointer of the first half ended a 12-3 run that put Southern Miss up 29-20 with 1:30 to play in the first half, breaking the game open.
Houston held Southern Miss' second-leading scorer Sai'Quon Stone to three points, eight below his average. He was 0-for-7 from the field.
The Cougars, though, were 4-of-29 from 3-point range.
Craft scored 11 points for Southern Miss and Stone had eight rebounds. Jahmar Thorpe added 14 for Houston and Dion Dowell added 11 points and eight rebounds.
Penders said Southern Miss is making progress under Eustachy.
"Even in his first two years here, Larry's teams always played hard even though they struggled," Penders said. "And now he's added some key players and they are turning things around."
