Cougars Rout Rice

HOUSTON, TX -- The Houston Cougards made short work of the Rice Owls Thursday night. The Cougars defeated the Owls 81-58 in front of an announced crowd of 459 fans.Houston (16-13 overall, 10-6 in C-USA) never trailed in the ball game and led Rice (13-16, 7-9) by as many as 37 points.The victory clinched the 2nd-seed and a first-round bye in next week's C-USA Championship."It was a game I hoped would play out that way but it wasn’t something I was expecting," said UH head coach Joe Curl. "It is always a dogfight when we play Rice, and I still felt like it was. They do a lot of things well, and I never thought it was out of reach until the end. I was coaching in four-minute increments so I wasn’t really looking at the score until it was winning time, which is the last eight and four minutes."The Cougars led the Owls 50-23 at halftime; and, the Coogs increased the lead to 37 points (68-31) at the 12:18 mark of the second half.Then, the Cougars got sloppy. H...