Tap the brakes slightly on giving up...

[stang_fan]

I'm not ready to give up on this season. In the Tech game I saw the worst SMU team I've ever seen. They haven't been that bad in the other games. They are very sloppy, but I'm not going to give up hope until we at least finish our non-conference schedule. If we get soundly defeated by Baylor and TCU then I'll probably write this season off, but until then let's enjoy the win. At this point, I know it's not saying much, but we do have a winning record. Tech beat-up on UTEP, too. They are really starting to roll. You know they were thinking payback against us. We never have been a great road team. Give it a couple more games.

[HixsontoLeVias]

Worst team ever??!!? You must have still been in diapers when Rod Hampton / Reggie Muhammed / Vernon Perdue / Tony Patterson slashed and dashed their way to a 10-18 record.....now THAT was a bad team.

[Charleston Pony]

oh we've definitely had some teams that were painful to watch at times. How about Dave Bliss' 1st team that went something like 6-22? That was a fun year as I recall.

[OldPony]

If the other "worst teams" played UT Tyler, Montana St and Texas St. they would also ahve been undefeated. None of the above teams even belong on the schedule except as a easy breather. This is the worst SMU basketball team in my memory but I've only been watching 40 years or so.
Notice BHype played well against a nobody except that even they turned him over too much. I really thought we would be good this year so maybe that's why I see these guyss as the worst ever. Just the sheer disappointment. Is it too late to get Dement back?

[Stampede]

Give it a rest, OP. I'll bet anything you did not like Shumate either. You are starting to embarass yourself.

SMU actually played pretty well last night. Much better spacing on the offensive end, hard picks and good effort on the defensive end.

I might also remind UT beat TX ST by just over 20 and did not close that game out until late as well. SMU will be okay if we keep getting better as the season progresses.

[OldPony]

Stampede- You are right on two accounts. I did not like Shumate. He and Cavan are the only 2 coaches that I supported being fired. I didn't disagree with Dement's firing after the team quit on him last year but I was wrong about that though. This group of players are quitters and have no heart. Dement should have stayed and they should have gone.
The other thing you are right about is that I should give it a rest. I see nothing from SMU that indicates a willingness to compete in either basketball or foootball. I believe that I will give it a rest and quit watching the Ponies. I have followed them religiously for about 40 years but the last 10 years have become too hard to watch and care especially since nearly no one else does. We no longer can stay on the same field or court with any of the rivals we once had. Does the ADMIN care? The answer is
a resounding NO.
Like most of the fans SMU once had have already done, it is time for OP to ride off in the sunset. I've enjoyed the participation of many of the people on this board but I think I will give it a rest and see if I ever want to come back at some later date. Good luck to you all.

[Hoop Fan]

OP, I see a big contradiction in what you are saying. I don't blame you for being frustrated, but how can you be so down on Jimmy Tubbs by calling for Dements return, while at the same time concluding that the players are the quitters and they have proven it? I'm not saying I think these guys are quitters but they are soft mentally and physically based on the evidence. If you think they are quitters by nature, then why blame the new coach? Its true enough that Tubbs helped recruit some of these guys before he went to OU, but his message about getting tougher has been consistent all along since he took the job. He gets it. Whether these guys can do it, I don't know, but Tubbs gets it and identified the problem early on in his public comments.

Hopkins is slumping but its unfair to say he only plays well against the weak sisters. Last years Tech and Purdue wins that you talk about were carried by BHop. And if his stats against Montana State were valid to create the Bhype comments, why isn't a better performance against a better Texas State team cause to layoff a bit?

The Tubbs era is not off to the start we all hoped, but lets see what type of team he puts together. Dez Willingham will be a good start. I'd still be shocked if Tubbs team two years from now doesnt have a vastly different personality than this one.

[stang_fan]

The Tubbs era is not off to the start we all hoped,

Not off to the start we all hoped??? If we all thought we were going to beat either OSU or Tech we should be ashamed of ourselves. We'll talk after TCU. Surely no one expected us to beat one of those teams. I'll give you we should not have gotten beaten that badly by Tech and maybe we should have rolled over Montana State, but when a team is shooting badly it's tough to beat anybody. It looks like we may be shooting better after the Texas State game. Let's see what happens before we say "this is a bad year for Tubbs, so let's just hope next year is better."

[Hoop Fan]

I'm not saying to give up on this season, all I said was its not off to a type of beginning we hoped for, as you quoted me. We haven't played well to start the year, Coach Tubbs wouldn't hide from that fact and no one else should either. Its not so much our record as the way we have played and the way our star player has struggled. Like you, I want to see what we do against TCU and Baylor in particular.

You can evaluate two things about Coach Tubbs right now, his early recruiting and the teams play for 5 measley games. All I am saying is nothing that has happened so far discourages me from my belief that Jimmy Tubbs will get SMU to the NCAA tournament in his tenure here.

[PK]

I didn't comment earlier about the Tech game, but from what I saw, excluding BHops shooting woes, there was definitely some home cooking going on there. There were many times the Tech guys were all but in our players uniforms and got no foul calls at all. Castro got called for walking as many time as he did because he was being pushed around under the basket by Tech players. Tech was playing VERY physical BBall and not getting many fouls called whereas when we tried to play in a similar manner we got called for fouls left and right. 29 FT's for Tech vs 18 for SMU. A lot of our turn overs were due to Tech reaching in and not being called.

Could we have beaten Tech?...probably not, but the score wouldn't have been that out of wack without the home cooking IMO.

[PonyPower]

The idea of bailing on this team, this early into the Tubbs era, is somewhere between comical and witch-hunt-ish. Not an option.

On to what's important: BEAT TCU!

[NavyCrimson]

i have a gut-feeling that coach tubbs is going to have a much harder job then most of us can imagine trying to turn this well-greased train wreck around - even within 3-4 yr period -

for what he wants to do with the talent we have, & we're talking about a whole new way of playing the game, it ain't going to be easy folks!

as for the crowd, once smu starts winning, the crowd situation will take care of itself - everybody loves a winner & that includes smu -

but if smu gives him the latitude to do his job (what a novel idea for smu), he'll get it done.

[Charleston Pony]

O.K. everybody; can we all agree that looking at this year's schedule ANY rational person would have figured SMU to be 3-2 at this point of the season? The hard core optimists might have hoped for 4-1 while the pessimists probably feared 2-3. The fact that we aren't domiating the teams we are expected to beat and the blowout at TTech admittedly is cause for concern, but the season is young and we are right where we should be in the W/L columns.

Hey, if we can find a way to beat TCU (surely few will expect that to happen) and Baylor (I feel better about that one) and have a winning record in WAC play, I don't care how we win. I would gladly take 10-11 one point wins in WAC play just as long as these guys find a way to win. Far too early to give up on anything.

[EastStang]

There are some folks in Dallas who staked their reputations on Jimmy Tubbs (namely some influential HS coaches). If he fails, they fail. I wasn't sold on Tubbs, but their support of him, sold me. I don't think we're going to fail long term. This cast of players may very well be the problem. If they don't listen, don't work, don't try, don't fight, then that is not coaching, that is on them.