Houston women’s basketball coach Ronald Hughey started his postgame press conference Tuesday by uttering one phrase.

“To God be the glory,” he said.

For Hughey and his Cougars, it had been a long time coming. Houston dropped its first five Big 12 Conference games, but on Tuesday at the Fertitta Center, the Cougars finally broke through, beating No. 24 ranked Oklahoma State, 79-76.

Houston (5-12, 1-5) shot 51.9 percent from the field (28-of-54) and also distributed 19 assists in the win. It was the Cougars’ first win against a ranked team since February of 2023 when they won at South Florida. Coincidentally, South Florida was also ranked when Houston previously beat a ranked team at home, in February of 2021.

In Tuesday’s win, Houston outscored Oklahoma State in the second quarter, 21-10, in taking a 39-28 lead at halftime. The Cougars then opened the second half on a 19-4 run to build a 26-point advantage, 58-32.

But Oklahoma State made a valiant comeback, and got within three in the final seconds and had a chance to send the game into overtime. However, the Cowgirls missed a game-tying 3 as time ran out, and Houston and Hughey was able to celebrate the win.

Sophomore guard Kierra Merchant led Houston with 20 points and also had four steals. Another sophomore guard, Gigi Cooke, added 16 points and grabbed five rebounds. A pair of graduate guards, Eylia Love and Laila Blair, were also in double figures with 15 and 10 points, respectively.

Here is a sampling of Hughey’s postgame comments following Tuesday’s win:

“First things first, that Oklahoma State team is really, really, really good. … But I can’t say enough about our group; we had some really hard practices once we got back (from playing at BYU and Utah) and some hard film sessions as well, just to be able to get them to understand how hard you have to play and for how long.

“I thought this was the first complete game we played for 40 minutes. (Kansas) State was 34 minutes, BYU was 33 minutes, Utah it was 31 minutes. Those kind of things where you have to play a complete 40-minute game to be able to do that because all these games are dogfights. But I can’t say enough about each and every one of them. … All of them came in and they played and they did exactly what we need to do. Especially with us, getting beat on the boards so bad, they came back and took care of that and I think we out rebounded them (Tuesday).

“The other thing we wanted to be able to do was win points in the paint, and we were able to do that as well because we had been losing that battle, but I’m really proud of them and the resilience of our team and I’m looking forward to practice (Wednesday).”

“That’s the one thing I try to get them to understand is what you put on film, that’s a weakness and that’s what people are going to come out and play again the next game. So again, early when we wasn’t guarding, people was driving downhill. We started guarding better, then people started throwing it inside to the post  and so we went to fronting the post.

“Now, everybody’s going to see how our press-breaker isn’t what we need it to be and now everybody’s going to press us now. So again, it’s something we’ve got to work on for the next couple of days before we get to Baylor (Houston’s next opponent on Friday, a road game in Waco).”

“We wanted to execute, we wanted to come down and make sure we get a shot. We call it GAS – Get A Shot. Get a shot, do not turn the ball over. Whatever we ran, we wanted to be able to stay down there and share the basketball.

“This is the most assists we’ve had all year, 19, and I hope they continue to understand that each and every person, we’ve got to have four in double figures and in order for that to happen, you have to share the basketball. And so that was at the thing that was different for us; we shared the basketball and people made shots.”