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Or we could consider the possibility that Jank, faced with losing two of his most productive players (in McMurray & Whitt) wanted a softer schedule to give this team, with all it's new faces, time to come together by the time conference play rolled around. Road games at Evansville, UNLV, Georgia & Vandy are not exactly what I would call cupcake city. Admittedly, the home schedule was weak with only Georgetown and Georgia State what I would consider "good" teams, but right now it looks like this team is coming along pretty well so I'm not going to bash Jank for this schedule. I guess some wish Jank had put together a murderer's row type schedule that might have had our guys completely demoralized by now. I tend to agree with those who compare this year's hoops schedule with the football schedule and things worked out pretty well on the gridiron...we just weren't talented enough to win the AAC and reach the coveted Cotton Bowl game.

You cannot compare football scheduling to basketball scheduling.
There is a clear recipe to earning a tournament bid, and we've totally ignored it and now have to nearly run the table on the top 2/3 teams in the conference to get Quad 1 and 2 wins.
Pinning your bid on upsets of ranked WSU and Memphis teams is more in the hope category than an actual plan.

Who here thought we would be 12-2 given all the unknowns about the new players?

I for one am happy to see it and the progress this team has made. Now lets keep improving and win some big AAC games.

For some with a short memory, in the past we would lose to teams on our schedule this year.

Everything is in front of us. Let's just enjoy it and see how it goes.

OOC matters for entertainment and attendance.

It also matters if the conference is deep and you want to be able to squeak into the tourney as a 5th team. Reference our NIT season.

But with the conference this season, you are going to need to finish 3rd with a couple of wins against WSU, Memphis, and Houston. Regardless of what you did non-conference. It just really doesn't matter this season.

I for one thought we would at least be 12-2 if not 14-0 at this point in the season with this schedule. At the same time, going into the season we did not know whether Davis and McNeill would be ruled eligible this season. It turns out one of the two got the waiver. Would we have won all the games we've won without Davis? Most likely not. Remove him and add tougher games to the schedule and we also knock ourselves out of an at large bid to the NCAA tournament. This program is still trying to recover from the mess that was left due to all the sanctions. Part of that is definitely on Jankovich but a big part of it is on Brown. As long as we keep building and moving forward I'm ok. Larry Brown is a living legend and not too many living legends are available, much less wanting or even willing to come to SMU. Rick Pitino is the only such coach available and I doubt the administration has the gumption to get him. Look at TCU right now and they have Dixon who has gotten them to the NIT, NCAA, NIT, and what looks like another NIT bid this season and that is in the Big XII, which is a perennial top 3 conference in basketball.

mustangxc wrote:I for one thought we would at least be 12-2 if not 14-0 at this point in the season with this schedule. At the same time, going into the season we did not know whether Davis and McNeill would be ruled eligible this season. It turns out one of the two got the waiver. Would we have won all the games we've won without Davis? Most likely not. Remove him and add tougher games to the schedule and we also knock ourselves out of an at large bid to the NCAA tournament. This program is still trying to recover from the mess that was left due to all the sanctions. Part of that is definitely on Jankovich but a big part of it is on Brown. As long as we keep building and moving forward I'm ok. Larry Brown is a living legend and not too many living legends are available, much less wanting or even willing to come to SMU. Rick Pitino is the only such coach available and I doubt the administration has the gumption to get him. Look at TCU right now and they have Dixon who has gotten them to the NIT, NCAA, NIT, and what looks like another NIT bid this season and that is in the Big XII, which is a perennial top 3 conference in basketball.

So 14-0 would have been credited to Janks coaching or his ability to get players? Or the schedule was just that bad from your perspective?

A combination of luck, weak schedule, hoping McNeill would be eligible, and we beat Georgetown on the road last year with a weaker roster. If we were undefeated of course Jankovich would deserve credit just like he deserves blame for the terrible effort against Georgetown.

Georgetown was a bad look.

Losing at Georgia in 2 OT isn't anything to fret about. Winning at Vandy is a solid win. In our league terms, both of those teams are about the same level as playing @Temple.

18 game conference schedule. To finish around third place you are going to basically want to win home games and split your road games. 12-6 or so in conference.

To finish 12-6:
Win 2 of the 5 against Houston, Memphis, and WSU
USF
UCF
@ECU
Temple
ECU
Tulane
UConn
@Tulane
@Tulsa
@USF

Additional losses: @Cincy, @Temple, @UCF

The above results would put us at 22 - 8 and put us in the NIT. I think we would need to be at 6 losses before the conference tourney in order to make the NCAA tourney.