The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Joseph Duarte Talks UH vs Texas A&M NCAA Matchup

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Joseph Duarte Talks UH vs Texas A&M NCAA Matchup

1233. Matt and Ross with you here on Sports Talk 7. And A let's go to a city I've been to, I don't know, 30 times in the last 10 years, Joseph Dwarte in Oklahoma City where he will watch the Aggies and the Cougars play a 510 game tomorrow inside the paycom center. Joseph, first of all, good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. Anything catch your eye yesterday. Forgetting about the score. forgetting about the hot start they had

and they really wasn't even a contest in the second half. Anything surprise you keen your interest in that first round game against Vandals? Yeah. I'd start off with you know, we've seen the freshman play this year. We

know what Kingston Fleming's is capable of. He's an all-American. I thought Chris and that coming in and, I mean, good God, 18 rebounds. I don't care if you're a freshman, Saltford Jr. or Senior, that's pretty impressive. So I think getting the first game jitters out of the way was important.

I thought that Emmanuel Sharp for all that he's done and the scoring that he's done, you know, he's kind of struggled a little bit, trying to fighting through some things the last couple of weeks for him to trigger that big run in the first half. You know, those are things that you want to see, but by no means, this team played a complete game yet. Last night was pretty close to it, except for that slow start. But, you know, you see them trending.

And as we get into March here, that's typically what Kelvin Samson's teams have done. So, you know, it was just little things like that. I don't know how much you can gauge because it was Idaho, but certainly moving forward, beginning Saturday against Texas A&M, the road gets much tougher. And that's kind of what you expect. You want to see that gradual improvement as you move along. of the tournament. Joseph, the game obviously was nationally televised, and there is still going to be a large

segment of the population that didn't see the Cougars at all this year. So there was a little bit of a storyline, not much of it, but at least a little bit of the, you know, this is Emmanuel Sharp, gets one more chance to kind of write the pathway of towards a national championship, has been with the team forever, and obviously the last few seconds of his career. Last year was not good with the double-dribble call. You've obviously talked to him about it, but you've been with those guys almost from the jump.

how much has that entered his mind? To say it hasn't entered his mind about where he needs to be and where he wants to go would be ridiculous. But how much has it been a theme in any point during the course of the college basketball season? Well, if you're a college basketball fan in Houston, you know, your generation and my generation, Matt, was the Lorenzo Charles moment in C.

You know, I'm watching the game last night, but I also have the TV monitors there. And, you know, they're replaying that play, that moment. in the final seconds against Florida where he didn't get the shot off and they turned the ball over. So, you know, that's sort of this generation's bad

heartbreak situation. And, you know, he talked about it at the beginning of the year. You know, there was a story in the athletic by C.J. Moore that he went on a trip with Ramon Walker and Jamal shed in the offseason

to, I forget where Turks and Kekos may be. and one night they're sitting at the table and finally it was like the moment to bring it up to Amanda Sharp and he was sort of therapeutic and he talked to us back in Houston about it right before the season

so it was there I think it's more of a not to redeem himself from that particular moment but sort of the get back to the national championship game and finish that job that they did not get to complete

the best thing about last night for me was that box score and under minutes played and look, you just finished playing off three games in Kansas the week before. There's a lot of intensity you're playing every other day to have some guys get some downtime in that second half had to be a huge benefit for the squad, especially in a

first round matchup where teams like Duke and some others did not have a chance to do that. Yeah, I mean, there was no suspense and no drama. You know, Mercy Miller, I thought, gave them some really good minutes. He's a guy that last year at this time, he wasn't even on the radar. He

was going to get mop-up time. If that, he was in a shooting slump. So it was good to get guys like him, you know, said, said Lott, who's number 14 or so on the bench, he got in with about three minutes of stuff. So that kind of gives you an idea how things are going, but you're right. This type of time of year, if you can get your starters out, you know, get them, keep them healthy, it goes a long way. And now Chase McCarty was one that a lot of people were concerned about it. He took a hard fall in the first half. Came back and played, talked to him after the game, said it was his calf, he's fine. But, you know, if you can get guys out of the game and keep them fresh, that's huge

because you never know what you're going to run up into. And, you know, I think a lot of U of H fans will hope that the second matchup with A&M in three years doesn't go to a type of overtime thriller as we saw in Memphis a few years ago. This Aggie basketball team took care of business, beat St. Mary's by 13. I don't know how much you witnessed it personally. This AG kid did a lot of heavy lifting for them yesterday. To the first possession of the game, they force a 10-second violation, and it just went downhill for St. Mary's from there. A&M-4's 18 turnovers, you're right, the AG kid. A guy, you know, he had 22 and 8, I believe, and he's their leading.

score and rebounder. But, you know, it was interesting because A&M did not end the regular season well. They got beat by 20 against Oklahoma in the first round of the SEC tournament. So it's kind of like which Aggie's team was going to show up. And I thought they did a really nice job. They went with a different lineup than they had all year. But it's sort of the same guys between Griffin, Dominguez. You know, I thought Pop Isaacs had a good game.

They're going to be formidable. They're undersized, but they're scrappy. They can sort of bring the game down in terms of tempo. So, I mean, this could be one of those, you know, 60-something, 50-something games that sort of also plays into Houston's willhouse. So two sort of similar styles. So it should be a good one in the second round. Yeah, the Cougar's size advantage is significant. But isn't Bucky Ball meant to run?

run and try to run teams out of the gym. And I'm curious if that's a concerted effort for them knowing they're going to have such a size disadvantage against the Cougars. Yeah, and I don't know much about Bucky Ball since I've focused on Kelvin Ball for most of the year. That's funny. But just when you look at it, you know, there have been teams that have tried to, that their style is based off of that festival.

Now, Houston can push the tempo when it needs to, Fleming's. alone helps them do that. But I've seen more times than not that Kelvin teams, and the way that they game plan and prepare, they sort of will you to have to play their style. And that's where Houston becomes really good when you have to play their ball. And, you know, I just think from a matchup,

you know, Houston should be, you know, the considerable favorites in this game. There's a lot on the line, Matt. You know, if you win this one, you were playing a de facto home game in the Toyota Center and you have two wins away for playing, you know, in the final four. So there's the motivations there. They quickly turned the page last night and they're set, you know, on A&M and Saturday. Joseph Dwarte from Oklahoma City.

Let me ask you about just the Houston Angola going back here. it's been a topic of conversation, but I feel like there's at least one team that would have this kind of advantage. And so I'm not going to apologize for it. University of Houston should not apologize for it. And ultimately it was the committee's decision to put these teams in the South because they deserve to be there being the sixth best team going in the tournament. Right. These things are planned out in terms of who's host and regional years in advance. and you just happen to have another year that Hussim was in position for number one seat. And they, you know, they were the fifth team just outside of that. And so they got a two in a very favorable region.

You know, they've seen it. You know, since I've been on the beat, you know, they've had Purdue last year in Indianapolis. You know, they've had some other schools that have played relatively close. So, you know, I don't really get it. The buy into that argument. It wasn't set up this way. There was no conspiracy. This thing was planned out, but you have to take advantage of it.

Now, a couple years ago, when the Final Four was in Houston, that was all the talk. Could they get to a hometown Final Four? They ended up getting upset in the Sweet 16th. You've got to go in. You've got to take care of business. The interesting thing, Matt, is if this region holds, you have the defending National Champion, Florida, the one seed that would be coming. You'd have Houston as the two.

you'd have Illinois as the three coming and then the four seed Nebraska. Nebraska has taken over Oklahoma City. There's some concern that if Nebraska is in that South region, their fans will travel. So it's going to be really impaired that the Houston fans show up and buy tickets because there could be red in that stand, but it may not necessarily be Houston red.