Yao scores on Mehmet Okur after a sweet move on the baseline that got him to the hoop in a big win against Utah Saturday night at Toyota Center. Yao scored a game-high 27 points on 11-of-16 shooting. grabbed 8 boards and blocked two shots. To see more photos from the game, click here.

by John

SATURDAY, 2/11/06 – The Rockets probably had one of their most impressive wins of the season Saturday night, taking an early lead against Utah and never relinquishing the lead in a 102-88 victory.

It reminded me of last year when they were playing so well in the second half of last season. Unlike the loss against the Lakers on Wednesday, the Rockets shared the ball (27 assists), shot well (49%), grabbed rebounds, and pushed the ball for many fast break points. You couldn’t ask for much more from the team as a whole.

Yao was amazing, scoring 27 points on 11-of-16 shooting in just 31 minutes, grabbing 8 boards, and blocking two shots. His teammates found him under the basket multiple times after they drove into the lane and drawing defenders, giving Yao easy dunks. He also had two scores on spin moves on the baseline, getting around defenders for easy dunks. He looked good and is really coming into his own.

T-Mac scored 25, grabbed 6 boards and had two blocks. Although he was 9-for-22 from the field, he took it to the rack more often rather than relying on jump shots as he has been doing alot lately without as much success.

David Wesley was third in Rockets scoring (17), playing efficiently by hitting 7-of-10 shots, and 3-of-4 three-pointers. It helped that Welsey only had to play 32 minutes, thanks to new Rocket reserve guard Keith Bogans making his debut in a Houston uniform.

Although Bogans, acquires a couple of days ago from Charlotte for Lonny Baxter, only had four points, but they were spectacular. His first basket as a Rocket occurred in the middle of the second quarter when Rafer Alston bounced a sweet no-look pass to Bogans as he was breaking toward the hole. Bogans then elevated, suspended in mid-air, drew a foul from Greg Ostertag, then shot it high off the glass as we as coming down for the bucket. A little over a minute later, he grabbed an offensive rebound in the middle of the lane and scored on a nice garbage basket to make it 38-25. That’s all that Bogans scored for the night, but they were impressive and welcomed.

The Rockets opened up an 18-point lead in the second quarter, but Utah was able to close the gap at 47-35. However, the way the Rockets were playing, it didn’t look like they were going to have any problems. They were clicking on many cylinders.

Yao fell to the floor as he bumped into T-Mac and a cluster of other players as he was running up the court in the middle of the third. It looked scary at first because he landed on his right elbow, checked out of the game and put an ice pack on it.

Without Yao, the Rockets opened up their lead to 80-58 at the end of the three quarters. The Jazz went on an 11-2 run to cut their deficit to 13 points with 8:47 remaining. But the Rockets didn’t collapse, held off the Jazz and managed to win their 5th game in 6 tries.

The Rockets turn right around and play the Knicks on Sunday night at Toyota Center on a rare back-to-back at home. I plan to be at that game, so it will be interesting to see if there is a discernable buzz in the building compared to earlier this season. I’ll let you know.

John
john@YaoMingFanClub.com

To see the boxscore from the game, click here.

To read the Houston Chronicle’s article about the game, click here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2006 at 11:59 pm and is filed under vs. Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.