Historical perspective

[Balatro Diabolus Ex]

There are a couple of interesting historical events this week, I've been waiting for the school to mention them, but I havent seen them in any of the press releases, so i thought I'd just share:

1) This will be the first time that the mens and womens teams have gone to the same post season tournament, in the same year. In 1993 the men went to the NCAA tournament, and the women reached the finals of the NWIT. In 2000 the mens team went to the NIT, and the women went to the NCAA tournament, beating 24th ranked Kent State in the first round, and losing to Georgia in the 2nd round.

2) This is the first time either team has hosted a home game in the NIT. The men have traveled to BYU in 1986, and Southwest Misssouri in 2000. The womens tournament used to invite just 8 teams and play the entire tournament at a neutral site, SMU has been to the WNIT 3 times since they changed to campus sites, but this is their first home game.

3) If SMU beats UC-Irvine, this will be the first time the mens team has won an NIT game.

Much has been made about the mens schedule being held against them by the scheduling committee, and with some cause. Before conference play began I looked at the RPI and our SOS was 303. Thats not a competitive schedule, or the schedule of a team that wants to be taken seriously. But I want to mention that this years schedule was actually an IMPROVEMENT over past years. This was the first time in roughly 15 years the SMU mens team played an OOC schedule that was comprised entirely of teams that were full members of NCAA division 1. Last year SMU played just one sub-D1 team (Malone) but Matt Doherty used to load the OOC schedule with teams that were not just sub-D1 (Dallas Christian, Abilene Christian, McMurry, Occidental, Huston Tillotson), but also teams that were in the transition phase of moving from D2 to D1 (South Carolina Upstate, North Carolina A&T, Florida Gulf Coast, Houston Baptist, Central Arkansas, etc.) That we actually played all D1 teams this year was a step in the right direcction.

People who have read my posts long term probably remember me railing about scheduling a pack of bottom feeders every year, and I still think we need to improve, but I'm not going to complain too loud when we are moving forward a bit, and now I think alot more people see why its necessary to play a competitive schedule.

In Rick Harts email he outlined several of the reasons why they took baby steps with the schedule this year, and some are valid. SMU finished at the bottom of a non-competitive conference last year, and was moving to a conference with 5 traditional power schools (I include Temple because of their history). The conference schedule was a major upgrade, so perhaps with a young team and lots of new players it wasnt wise to push things in OOC, particularly when you consider at that the OOC games would all be played off campus. It came back to bite us when the team exceeded expectations, but the reasoning was sound. Now people see why its important to upgrade, for both competitive reasons, and for attendance.

Thats all for now, if I can remember any other interesting trivia, I'll try to post it before the game.
Edited for typos.

[mrydel]

Thanks Jon.

[MustangStealth]

In 2000 the mens team went to the NIT, and the women went to the NCAA tournament, beating 24th ranked Kent State in the first round, and losing to Georgia in the 2nd round.

Not to nitpick, but... in 2000 the women beat NC State and lost to Old Dominion.

[Balatro Diabolus Ex]

In 2000 the mens team went to the NIT, and the women went to the NCAA tournament, beating 24th ranked Kent State in the first round, and losing to Georgia in the 2nd round.

Not to nitpick, but... in 2000 the women beat NC State and lost to Old Dominion.

Ack, you're right, Kent State and Georgia was the year before. Sorry.