NCAA Tournament - #1 Houston loses Jamal Shead to injury, falls to #4 Duke in Sweet 16
Jason Fitz, Krysten Peek and Danny Green discuss the Blue Devils' victory over the top-ranked Cougars, analyzing the ramifications of losing one of Houston's key players.
Video Transcript
JASON FITZ: Love him or hate him, everybody's got an opinion on Duke. Well, guess what, you can continue to run those opinions through everybody all the way into the Elite Eight as Duke takes down top-seeded Houston 54-51. Krysten Peek, Danny Green, Jason Fitz for Yahoo Sports.
Danny, this game came down to the wire. And the real story of this is Jamal Shead. The superstar for Houston gets injured early on. And it felt like Houston could never recover. What do you do as a player when your floor general really goes down and you don't have an answer for it?
DANNY GREEN: I mean, you can't do it with one person. It can't be hero ball. You have to pick it up with everybody. It has to be a collective group thing. And they just couldn't find it.
This team has had injuries all year and just tough ones during this tournament. Jamal Shead being out really, really hurt them. And Emanuel Sharp just couldn't find the rhythm he normally had-- well, had last game anyway. But beside that, I had give him a lot of credit.
They fought till the end, but there was some not great execution or drawn up plays in that fourth or the last possessions for them to get a better shot. A one-on-one flat in college, if that's Kevin Durant, cool. If that's Kyrie Irving and somebody like that-- not to take anything away from Emmanuel, he's a good player, but I don't think he's one of those guys. Step back, contested, it wasn't the best choice for me.
JASON FITZ: Yeah, I mean, KP, I want the story of this game to be about Duke advancing because that's obviously significant. It's just hard to put the context around that and not acknowledge everything Houston went through in this game and that it was still so close.
KRYSTEN PEEK: Absolutely. I mean, Danny touched on it. When you lose a player like Jamal Shead, I mean, he averages 6 and 1/2 assists per game. He had 21 points and 10 assists in the last game against Texas A&M.
So to lose him in the first five minutes of a game and then try to bounce back from that, it was an uphill battle. And, listen, we got to give Duke credit for the way they came out in the second half. It was a 1 point game at halftime.
And Jeremy Roach, the senior point guard who two years ago made a final four run with this squad-- I mean, so he's been there before-- he had all of his points, all 14 points in the second half. And Kyle Filipowski, Jon Scheyer was screaming from the sideline to get as many touches as possible on offense for him. He finished with 16 and 9.
So you got to give credit for execution down the stretch for Duke in the second half. But, yeah, I would have much rather seen a full strength Houston team face off with this Duke team because I think it would have been a different story, but Duke advances and tough, tough way to end the season for Houston.
JASON FITZ: I will say this. I've sat next to you guys enough over the last couple of weeks watching ball to think so often about senior leadership. And that played its way through this, right.
Like Duke definitely had guys that stayed calm in the moment. Houston took a long time to settle down. It turned out to be the difference in what was a great game for all of us that love March Madness.