Hello PonyFans — I’m back again for another season of SMU basketball.

First of all, I want to apologize for my lack of writing during the conference season last year. Well, believe me I wanted to. However, January and February for the CPAs (that’s what pays my bills these days) are particular difficult as I don’t get to do anything besides work. It’s funny how our lives turn out to be. If someone had told me that I’d be working 70-80 hours a week staring at the numbers after college, I’d probably called that person a lunatic. But that’s my career now, and I’m quite happy about it. Anyway, I’m really excited about writing again for PonyFans.com, and I promise that I try to keep up with the team as much as I can. Please let me know if you have any specific questions or comments to me as I truly appreciate your feedback.

Rackauskas says head coach Matt Doherty and his staff have to help their team resist the urge to play down to the level of lesser competition (photo by Travis Johnston).

How about them (football) Mustangs? Many of you — including myself — were pretty skeptical about this season … and don’t even say you weren’t, because I read PonyFans.com. What an amazing story! Coach (June) Jones is truly working his magic with this team, and even somebody (like me) who doesn’t understand football that well can see the vast improvement. We all predicted that the offense would be good with Coach Jones’ expertise and schemes. However, I can not believe how awesome our defense is. I am really pumped to watch the play of my fellow European from Estonia, as Margus Hunt continues to get better and better every game. Keep blocking those field goals, big fella! With a 7-5 record (should’ve been 9-3, in my opinion, and playing for the C-USA championship), we are going back to a bowl game after 25 painful years. What a great treat for the SMU fan, with the football team playing in the Hawaii Bowl while basketball team plays in the Diamondhead Tournament — I think it’s a great excuse to make that trip to the islands!!!

Speaking of the basketball team, the season has begun. To be honest with you, I (as well as most of you) personally expect a lot of improvement in the team this year. I had a chance to go to the Basketball Tip-off dinner this fall again and I really enjoyed it. Hubert Davis, ESPN college basketball analyst, was the guest speaker this year. He delivered a great message that night. People think that it is really easy to show up when the times are good. However, it is much more difficult to show up when the adversity hits. That was the theme of his speech: show up. I hope the players listened to it, as it was primarily directed to the team. They must realize that they have to give their best effort no matter what the outcome might be. Only then will they start seeing the results.

I hope that speech that Hubert Davis gave during the Tip-Off Dinner is still on the players’ mind. With 3-3 start after the first six games, SMU definitely is not where we were all hoping and expecting to be. Even though I am a strong believer that every single game in college is winnable no matter which team you play, we did start the season against very tough competition, starting the season against South Florida and Texas A&M. Both opponents were very strong and talented, as they both come from very solid basketball conferences (the Big East for South Florida, and

The Big XII for A&M). While it would have made my day for SMU to beat the Aggies (or South Florida), they are clearly a better team and they deserved the win. I do want to give props to our team for playing very hard against both opponents and continuing to fight. I came away very impressed with the overall effort and hustle.

After starting 0-2, SMU played two opponents that definitely were weaker than us and were not as high-profile in college basketball as the first two games. Therefore, we could definitely see the change in our team effort as well.

From my own experience, it is very challenging to play someone like Florida Gulf Coast (a team that you clearly expect to beat) after playing a very emotional game like the one SMU played against the Aggies in front of very good crowd. I don’t know how to explain it, but players tend to play up or down to the competition level. Only very well-coached and experienced teams avoid these types of ups and downs and stay consistent. That’s exactly what I saw in the two games against Florida Gulf Coast and Huston-Tillotson — guys lacked effort, they were going through the motions. Even though we did win the games (as we should have), the quality of play was not very good. I hope that the team and coaches used this as a learning experience — there are no “guarantee” games in college basketball and every opponent must be taken seriously!

Then came one of the pivotal games for the season. When I looked at the SMU basketball schedule, I thought that the TCU game was very important because it could have gone either way. Also, it is our main rival and it is very important to beat the Frogs every time we get a chance!!! With 2-2 record going into this game, we had a chance get into the winning column. However, after a great first-half effort, SMU came away short once again.

That was probably one of the most frustrating games I watched in a while. I just couldn’t believe we lost to the Frogs after completely dominating them in the first half. We played so well at the beginning — defense was almost perfect as we played hard-nosed man defense with some half-court zone traps. The guys were flying on the court and the energy level was unbelievable. To be honest with you, I was telling a friend of mine (who is a TCU grad) that the Frogs were lucky to be within five points after the first half.

Unfortunately, everything changed in the second half. The defensive intensity was not there anymore as we gave up wide open 3s, one after another, and got out-hustled. With the TCU’s lead increasing, our players became more and more timid and started making bad decisions offensively. As bad as we played in the second half, SMU still had a great chance to take the lead with 37 seconds to go. It all came down to making the free throws – one of the least complicated basketball elements, and yet one of the most challenging aspect of the game. We lost the game because we missed the free throws and TCU made all theirs.

All of the great and bad plays that were made earlier in the game did not mean anything as it all came down to FT at the end of the game. I do want to give props the team, because they kept fighting and did not give up. Just like Hubert said, “Keep showing up!” The season is nowhere near to being over, and there is no reason to panic after first six games. Let’s hope that our players and coaches will make necessary adjustments and we can turn the season around in the next couple of games.

To conclude, I want to stress one thing that really bothered me, especially at A&M game. The atmosphere in Moody was electric, as there were a lot of people in the stands. However, it absolutely sucked the fact that about two-thirds of them were Aggie fans. It is frustrating for me to see how they outnumbered us in our own gym. Yeah, they are the bigger university and they follow their teams really well. Still, we have to continue supporting this team, as the players and coaches need the fans to be behind the team. It feels so much better for a player to walk in your gym and see Mustang faithful in the stands cheering for SMU. Thus, I urge you guys to keep attending the games and cheer for you team.

“Keep showing up!”