We are being mocked by the Dallas Morning News

[tmustangp]

go to our page on DMN.com and you will read this


No stories published recently
02:25 AM CDT on Sunday, May 14, 2006
No SMU stories have been published recently.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 876df.html

[ponydawg]

Good, we deserve it.

[PonyPower]

The hell we do. Personally, I'm a PonyFan and I want to read about my school, whether it's offseason football news or the golf teams or tennis or Tiddly Winks. I'm not saying we should be on the front page every day, but this is sad.

[ponydawg]

I would love to read about them too.
UNT and TCU have articles about Track and Baseball, maybe if we had those sports you could.

Even our own Blogger can't find much to write about us, his last entry was a week ago.

[ponyplayer]

The hell we do. Personally, I'm a PonyFan and I want to read about my school, whether it's offseason football news or the golf teams or tennis or Tiddly Winks. I'm not saying we should be on the front page every day, but this is sad.

ahh...Tiddly Winks champ is a SMU student...............

[mr. pony]

Check out herald-democrat.com. There's a lengthy story today (5/16) on Matt Doherty.

[Water Pony]

Without Non-revenue sports (baseball and Men's Track & Field) to cover the gap in the college sports calendar, it is not surprising.

[Corso]

Nice story!

Going to the Matt
Doherty has big things in mind as new SMU head coach.

By Rick Atkinson
Special to the Herald Democrat

UNIVERSITY PARK — New SMU men’s basketball coach Matt Doherty has some ideas that are bound to get folks’ attention: make the Mustangs ‘Dallas’ Team’, crack the top ten and have coveted-recruits routinely include SMU on their wish lists with perennial hoop powers.

Unthinkable? Doherty, 44, says the time is right.

“We are ready to embrace athletics again on this campus in the Dallas community,” he said. “This should be Dallas’ college basketball team. Much like St. John’s is in New York; Georgetown is in DC; DePaul is in Chicago. We should be Dallas’ team.

“When kids say they’re interested in SMU, I want the next line of schools to be … Duke, Villanova, Virginia, Stanford. That’s the mix that we want to be in.”

This may take some getting used to around Pony-ville, where the men’s team hasn’t made an NCAA tournament appearance in 13 years and just finished a season with an RPI of 269, one of the lowest among Division I-A programs in the country.

“I get annoyed when people say, ‘You guys are a good mid-major school.’” Doherty said. “We’re not mid-major. There’s not anything mid-major about SMU — from the city we’re in, the university, the facilities that we’re going to build, to way that we’re going to play.”




DISD challenge

To be a part of the community, a key for SMU will undoubtedly be reestablishing good relations with Dallas ISD coaches miffed at the recent firing of Doherty’s predecessor, Jimmy Tubbs.

“I feel very well received by them for the most part,” Doherty said. “I’ve reached out to them. I understand some of their frustration and I respect it. I’m glad they care.”

SMU has been unable to achieve success in recent years, though situated in a major media market with loads of basketball talent all around. Doherty is not surprised at the Mustangs’ difficulties, however.

“I think SMU has suffered a tremendous emotional blow through the whole death penalty, and coming out of that,” he said. “I think that [deleted] the progress of the athletic department — and rightfully so. That was a major blow to this university.”

Doherty praised outgoing athletic director Jim Copeland and school president R. Gerald Turner for their leadership and vision in articulating to the faculty and supporters how athletics can succeed at SMU.

Copeland’s replacement, Steve Orsini, 49, takes over June 1.

Doherty said Orsini brings energy and competitiveness to the program.

“He is a very aggressive guy who has won,” said Doherty. “He won as a (football) player at Notre Dame as captain of the ‘77 championship team. He has won in an administrative role at Georgia Tech and Central Florida. And he’s gonna win here.”

Add President Turner, who played college basketball at Lubbock Christian, and Doherty said he feels he’s got a lot of support from above.

“I don’t take that lightly, the fact that they played,” he said. “I think that’s important. And they have a shared vision of being a Top 25 program. I’d like to take that a step farther and shoot for a Top 10 program.”


Facilities upgrades

A tangible sign of new excitement at SMU will soon take shape. Construction may begin as soon as this summer on a much-needed basketball practice facility. About $9 million has poured in toward the $12 million price tag. The facility is seen as a key building block to achieving the program’s goals.

“I think it’s important in a couple of areas,” Doherty said. “One, it shows the community … that’s there’s a real commitment to basketball at SMU. Two, functionally, we need it. We only have Moody Coliseum.”

He noted that things get crowded with men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and other events sharing the same facility.

“We need to have a place that’s our home — that we know is there whenever we need it,” Doherty said. “And I think that also gives our players a sense of pride in our program.”

Major renovations are also planned for Moody.


Winning resume

As a player at North Carolina, Doherty starred at forward for four years as the Tar Heels were racking up 28-plus wins per season. Doherty played alongside Michael Jordan and James Worthy on the 1982 national championship team. The head coach? The legendary Dean Smith.

While an assistant under Roy Williams for seven years at Kansas, the Jayhawks compiled a 202-42 record. In 1999-00, in his first head coaching job, Doherty led Notre Dame to its first 20-win season in 10 years.

The next year Doherty returned to his alma mater, winning AP National Coach of the Year honors. That season the Tar Heels finished 26-7, were ACC regular season co-champs, and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament. North Carolina dipped to 8-20 his second season, before rebounding to 19-16 in 2002-03, his final year at Chapel Hill.

Doherty said he has learned that coaching is 50 percent science and 50 percent art.

“I felt comfortable with the science part,” he said. “The art part is leadership; chemistry. That’s the area I felt I wanted to improve the most. When I lost my job at North Carolina, that’s the part I really focused on for that two-year time period (before taking the Florida Atlantic University job.)”

In one season at FAU, 2005-06, Doherty led the Owls to their best conference record in school history, 14-6.

His overall head coaching record is 90-71.


Recruiting

Highly-regarded Dallas South Oak Cliff star Darrell Arthur just signed with Kansas. Early on, SMU reportedly was in the running for his services, but had fallen out of the race by the time Doherty arrived. Still, he said he made contact with SOC head coach James Mays concerning Arthur at a recent coaches clinic in San Antonio.

“I did reach out,” Doherty said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t at least talk to Coach Mays about him, and I did.

“I understood it was late in the (recruiting) game. And (Mays) said that.”

In the future, if Doherty gets the players he wants, fans should expect a wide-open entertaining offensive show.

He likes to recruit players that can “pass, handle and shoot.”

“P-H-S,” Doherty said. “I like skilled players.”

What about now?

So how good can the Mustangs be this year?

“I don’t know,” said Doherty, adding he doesn’t yet have a feel the Ponies’ talent level. “The only thing I can promise you is that we’ll overachieve. Every team I’ve ever coached, every team I’ve been a part of, we’ve overachieved.”

One promising player from last year, Brian Morris, left the squad after Tubbs’ firing. Bamba Fall, Dez Willingham, Derrick Roberts, Donatas Rackauskas and Devon Pearson return with plenty of experience.

“Bamba’s got some work to do, yet, to see where he’ll be at — some academic work,” Doherty said. “But I think we have a good nucleus. I think they’re good guys. I think they want to win.”


MJ sighting?

As for Michael Jordan, Doherty said he hasn’t talked with him in over a year.

“Michael changes cell phone numbers more than the weather changes in Dallas,” he said.

Doherty said he may see him at a golf event in Greensboro, North Carolina in July.

“I’m planning on being there and I would assume Michael will be there.”

Any chance Jordan will show up for a game at Moody?

“I have no idea,” said Doherty. But he said Dallas resident George Lynch, a member of the ’93 Tar Heel national champs and current New Orleans Hornet, has been to Moody.

“I want our players to be surrounded by pros,” Doherty said. “What I mean is ‘pros’ in a truer sense — guys with character and work ethic, who have been successful in the game of basketball.”

Nothing mid-major about that.

[MustangStealth]

Hey DMN, how is circulation doing (he asks knowingly)?

[bagice]

“Bamba’s got some work to do, yet, to see where he’ll be at — some academic work,”

This worries me...I had heard some rumors that he was having trouble in his classes but this is the first time I have seen a hint at it in print.

Anyone know how serious it is?

[True Colors]

To be a part of the community, a key for SMU will undoubtedly be reestablishing good relations with Dallas ISD coaches miffed at the recent firing of Doherty’s predecessor, Jimmy Tubbs.

I cannot tell you just how vehemently I disagree with this statement. There is absolutely nothing tangible that anyone can point to that the DISD coaches ever did to help Tubbs at SMU. Nothing. If they really cared so much about seeing Tubbs do well at SMU, then they should have put in a LOT more effort to influence their players to be Mustangs. The fact that they delivered virtually nothing to Tubbs to help him at SMU takes away and and all gripes that they think they might have had.

TC

[Stallion]

how does a high school coach deliver a player to SMU. It is the most unbelievably naive concept especially when almost all the players we lost out on were recruited by Top 20 program. All of you that think this way-get a CLUE!. Hell we can't even get the sons and daughters of some of our most famous alumni to look at us.

S

[smu diamond m]

how does a high school coach deliver a player to SMU. It is the most unbelievably naive concept especially when almost all the players we lost out on were recruited by Top 20 program. All of you that think this way-get a CLUE!. Hell we can't even get the sons and daughters of some of our most famous alumni to look at us.

S

BING
Totally agree. As for the alumni, they don't necessarily choose what school their kids go to. But then again, there are alumni who don't care enough about SMU to say something.

[mavsrage311]

wow, stallion is hot stuff now, signing out with the first letter of his name...as far as Bamba goes, I have heard he is struggling mightily in his classwork...that he doesnt give 2 you know whats about his schoolwork

[KnuckleStang]

Bamba, we hardly knew ye...