UNC Basketball: 2019 NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional Preview
By Trevor Marks
Elite Eight, Part Two
Houston
The Houston Cougars, weak non-conference schedule aside, are a team that no one in the NCAA wants a piece of. The Cougars are experiencing a level of success that the city hasn’t seen since the Phi Slama Jama days of Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, with a 31-3 record and well-rounded arsenal of players (top-25 in offense and defense) making for one serious Final Four contender.
Opponents unlucky enough to face Houston this year are held to the lowest effective field goal percentage in the nation (42.4 eFG%), the second-lowest three-point percentage (27.6 3P%), the fifth-lowest two-point percentage (43.1 2P%), and only allowing opponents to grab 65.3 of Houston’s missed field goal attempts. The Cougars consistently rack up extra possessions through solid rebounding, careful ball control and pesky defense, making games hellish for their opponents.
It’s not hard to see how the Cougars could end up the last team standing out of the Midwest when it’s all said and done. At 8-3 against Tournament teams, Houston can say that its played legit competition at points throughout the season, and can rightfully say that they’re fully capable of beating more, too. An Elite Eight bout between the Tar Heels and Cougars would be one of the tightest games of the Tournament. UNC offers a top-10 offense and defense with a mix of talented upper- and underclassmen who have a serious size advantage over the bite-sized Cougars, but picking a winner from this potential game is difficult. UNC has only lost to No. 1 seeds (Duke, Virginia) in the team’s final 17 games, but Houston would be a team mighty enough to buck that trend. UNC shouldn’t want to see this Cougar team in two weeks.
Georgia State
Ron Hunter has his Panther squad back in the NCAA Tournament for the third time in five years thanks to elite shooting (38.4 3P%, 17th nationally) offense spearheaded by junior guard D’Marcus Simonds. Averaging 18.4 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.3 steals and a block per game, Simonds is on NBA radars as a sneaky second-round prospect and is certainly looking to improve his stock—and the team’s successful season—with a first-round upset over Houston.
The No. 14 Panthers pulled off the 14–3 upset over Baylor back in 2015 thanks to talented upperclassmen leading the way and are hoping to do the same this year, but against a streaking Houston team, the odds are slim. Georgia State making it to the Elite Eight was assuredly be due to Simonds’ heroics, but a potential matchup with UNC would end their Cinderella run; with how bad the Panthers are on the glass (316th offensively, 336rd defensively), the Heels would do their best to limit Ron Hunter’s team to whatever the record for fewest rebounds in a Tournament game is.