Head coach Matt Doherty and the SMU men’s basketball team are in somewhat unfamiliar territory: not only are they facing an unfamiliar opponent in the first round of the CIT Wednesday — they’re also grateful to be playing at this time of year.

Just one player on the roster — senior guard Collin Mangrum — has played a single game after a college tournament; that happened at the University of North Texas, where he played before transferring to SMU. Nevertheless, Doherty said Tuesday that he doesn’t worry about his veteran team — the Ponies have six seniors and five juniors on their roster — taking on characteristics of an inexperienced team when the ball goes up at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Moody Coliseum.

Matt Doherty said Scott Sutton has taught his Oral Roberts many of the same principles his father and brother have coached (photo by Travis Johnston).

“I think they’re confident,” Doherty said of his players, “and excited to be still playing basketball at this time of year.

“A lot goes on in the heads of young people, and (the SMU coaches) asked them, ‘what do you think of playing while the school is on spring break?’ and other questions like that. We got some great answers, too. One of the best was when we asked, ‘do you want to win? Why do you want to win?’ Collin answered it best. He said, ‘because it’s a game and they keep score.’ That’s the right attitude. That was great to hear.”

Looking at his team’s season, Doherty expressed genuine disappointment that SMU lost its last four games, including the one-point decision in El Paso last week in the Conference USA tournament. On the other hand, he pointed out, the Ponies lost the four games by a combined total of just nine points.

According to Mangrum, who became the first player in UNT history to play in multiple (2007, 2010) NCAA tournaments, the key to postseason success is as simple as effort.

“I know that in postseason play, intensity picks up,” Mangrum said. “We were a little flat at times in the last few games, and it cost us. If we do that again, Oral Roberts is a pretty good team, and we could get beaten, but if we pick that up, we’ll play well.

“Coach (Doherty) always talks about (giving) just ’10 percent more.’ It could be 10 plays a game, or even five plays a game. Maybe if we got one more box-out against Rice, or one more push against Marshall or UCF … maybe we bury them.”

Doherty said he has not faced off against Oral Roberts head coach Scott Sutton during his coaching career, but he certainly is familiar with Sutton’s famous coaching family — his father, Eddie, was the long-time head coach at Oklahoma State and Kentucky, while his brother, Sean, also served as head coach at OSU and now advises his brother at ORU — and sees some similar characteristics between this year’s Golden Eagles and the teams Sutton’s brother and father coached.

“His brother was on the (Oklahoma State) bench when I was an assistant at Kansas,” Dohert said, “and it’s easy to see the similarities. They play a motion offense and a lot of man-to-man defense … just like his dad’s teams and his brother’s teams.”

The Oral Roberts motion offense is different from the Princeton-style motion offense SMU operates, Doherty said.

“They are more of a free-lance offense than we are,” Doherty said. “They do some random cutting and screening that can be difficult to defend. In ours, we have specifically defined actions based on what the defense does. Our actions are dictated by reads, and they’re specific and pretty simple. We don’t do a lot of random things, much free-lancing at all. Everything we do is keyed off the other guys.”

The Golden Eagles are led by 6-foot-6 junior forward Dominique Morrison, who averages 19.4 points per game, and sophomore guard Warren Niles, the team’s second-leading scorer this season (14.4 points per game), thanks in large part to 73-of-198 shooting on three-pointers.

“(Niles) is a shooter, we know that,” said Mangrum, adding that he expects to guard each of the Golden Eagles’ top scoring threats at different times throughout the game. “He gets up a lot of shots, but he’s not a selfish player. It looks like he works within their offense pretty well, and if an open shot is there, he’s comfortable taking it.

“Morrison is just a great scorer — he’s a guy who can really do it all. He only averages about one three-pointer per game, but he just has a great knack for scoring. He can shoot, he can drive and he can get to the foul line.”

Collin Mangrum said the Mustangs will need to increase their intensity to find success in the postseason (photo by Travis Johnston).

Doherty said Morrison and Niles aren’t the biggest challenge the SMU defense will face.

“What they do well is they’re very balanced on offense,” Doherty said. “They score 75 points per game — 38th in the country in scoring — and they have four guys averaging in double figures. They move the ball very well, and they have a good assist-to-turnover ratio. So while they don’t have that one guy who can blow you away by himself, they get contributions from a lot of guys. We’re going to have our hands full.”

Doherty said that he doesn’t anticipate his team having a case of postseason nerves, because the Ponies already have had a better season than many expected.

“I have told the guys, I’m proud of what they have done this season,” he said. “We were picked near the bottom of the conference, and we finished 8-8. We have a winning record. We got back to the postseason.

“We have lost some games we could have won, but we also have won some games we could have lost. I don’t grade individual performances based on wins and losses, because sometimes you can play poorly and win, or you can play great and lose. If we lose, I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll still be proud of what this team has accomplished. If we win, of course, I’ll feel even better.”

Doherty said the close losses at the end of the season are an indication of just how close the competition is in Conference USA; likewise, the victories SMU earned this year over teams like Memphis and Tulsa (on the road) are an indication of the progress he has seen in his team over the course of the season.

“Just like the players are excited to still be playing, I’m excited to still be coaching at this time of year,” Doherty said. “Oral Roberts is a good team, and I think a pretty good matchup for us. If we play hard and play smart and do the things we’re supposed to do, there’s no reason we can’t win some more games.”