No way around it: OUTCOACHED

[MustangIcon]

harp was/is on the floor late in games bc he is the best on the ball defender SMU has. against rice and last night Doh did do quite a bit of subbing harp in on D and keeping nayakundi in on O. i will admit that harp has been an absolute nonfactor on offense in his two years at SMU. however, you cannot complain about having poor defense yet in the same breath b*tch about having your top on-ball defender on the floor bc he doesn't contribute enough on the offensive side of the ball.

as a friend of mine pointed out, even prior to malone being MIA, no way malone is back next season. doherty has never been pleased with his effort on D and alex found his way into the doghouse bc of that and lord only knows what else. i agree with him that malone will transfer after the season.

this is a game we should have and need to win.

[Harry0569]

[quote="MustangIcon"]

as a friend of mine pointed out, even prior to malone being MIA, no way malone is back next season. doherty has never been pleased with his effort on D and alex found his way into the doghouse bc of that and lord only knows what else. i agree with him that malone will transfer after the season.

I completely agree. There is a zero percent chance Malone is back next season. I kept hearing about all of his potential, but it never took form on the court. He played way too passively and would dribble in circles, like he was lost. I hope he finds a place where he can excel, but the Alex Malone experiment is as good as over.

[Stallion]

SMU finally decided to have an athletic program about a 5 years ago and actually got serious last year. The Death Penalty-what a bunch of BS. The Ken Pye Penalty is what has been to blame. Once we get through getting rid of all the "academic reforms" that he instituted to solve "cheating, not academic" scandals, you will see SMU go to bowls and tournaments-(maybe not NCAA Tournaments anytime soon because CUSA doesn't have too many bids)-but we will be competitive.

[LA_Mustang]

SMU finally decided to have an athletic program about a 5 years ago and actually got serious last year. The Death Penalty-what a bunch of BS. The Ken Pye Penalty is what has been to blame. Once we get through getting rid of all the "academic reforms" that he instituted to solve "cheating, not academic" scandals, you will see SMU go to bowls and tournaments-(maybe not NCAA Tournaments anytime soon because CUSA doesn't have too many bids)-but we will be competitive.

I've always been on board with your opinion of our failed model....the results speak for themselves....but until we get coaches in here who can really coach the boys as solid gameday coaches, and ones who can out recruit TCU, Tulsa and the lower tier Big XII - we will continue to lose. Doherty had the rep as being a great recruiter but so far out of ten plus recruits, he has hit on one 4 year player - McCoy - and two transfers - Williams and Faye. Yet with those three we are still losing to Rice and ECU - very bad teams.

It seems that JJ may be turning the corner with recruiting if he signs the current committed class, but like you, I can't figure out why he hasn't landed a big-time QB?? I expected more on the field than 1 win from a $2 million dollar coach but obviously we have to give the guy a couple of years to get this thing out of the ditch - I know that.

[Hoop Fan]

harp is not that good of a defender. he's ok, has good defensive technique i would agree, but is certainly not a lock up defender in D1. Got broken down off the dribble and splashed on a key possession yesterday and does quite often.

and even if harp was our "best" defender, you most certainly can complain about bad defense and having harp on the floor at the same time. basketball is an up and down game, you have to be able to contribute on both ends or else you are a liability to your team.

[PlanoStang]

B.S.

Death penalty? are we seriously dragging that out still? Plenty of teams with less to go on then us have had much greater success (Houston for goodness sake - that school is worthless and they punch out solid basketball teams every three years or so).

There is no reason SMU cannot be good at basketball. No excuse for losing to Rice, Pine bluff, and ECU. None. Doherty must now look in the mirror.

Dia and Bamba have to both grow a pair. We would be better off playing an all freshman team.

You and many other well meaning ponyfans still don't seem to understand just how far SMU's athletic dept. was set back, due to the sanctions dealt by the NCAA. Why is it so hard to understand? I'll drag it out as long as I damn well see fit.

Glen,

It has been 20 years. The breakup of the SWC has done far more damage to the SMU athletic program than the death penalty.

I agree that the SWC collapse was more damaging. I'm just saying that you cannot underestimate the harshest sanctions ever recieved by an NCAA school. There is no one else to compare ourselves to because we are the only school that ever recieved such a penalty. So how can you just brush it aside as if it were meaningless?

Glen,

I'm not brushing it aside but there are programs that have started football and/or just moved up to IA within the last 10 years that have accomplished far more than SMU in that time frame.

As for hoops, I thought Dement did a really good job, best of any SMU coach in football or hoops in the last 20 years, he just couldn't get over that final hurdle.

The hoops program now is a complete mess.

Don't forget that Shumate won a SWC Championship 6 or 7 years after
the DP. Breakup of the SWC, and the WAC have hurt a lot worse than
the DP. The Pye guy didn't help a whole lot either.

[SoCal_Pony]

Glen,

It has been 20 years. The breakup of the SWC has done far more damage to the SMU athletic program than the death penalty.

They are not mutually exclusive.

Our reaction to the death penalty guaranteed Baylor being chosen over us….if we had taken a different approach….who knows???

SMU, and more specifically…DALLAS…is a better fit than Waco.

Even W. figured that out.

[Glenn Sosbee]

SMU finally decided to have an athletic program about a 5 years ago and actually got serious last year. The Death Penalty-what a bunch of BS. The Ken Pye Penalty is what has been to blame. Once we get through getting rid of all the "academic reforms" that he instituted to solve "cheating, not academic" scandals, you will see SMU go to bowls and tournaments-(maybe not NCAA Tournaments anytime soon because CUSA doesn't have too many bids)-but we will be competitive.

You are dead-on with the Ken Pye reference, but he was brought to SMU just after the NCAA death hammer. The faculty at SMU completely freaked out and wanted to end football. Completely shut it down forever, and they didn't want to stop there. They wanted to move our whole athletic dept. to a division 2, or even 3 level. These faculty elitists detested athletics anyway and this was a great excuse to be done with them, or least reduce them to irrelevance. So Pye appeased them by instituting these ridiculous standards virtually making it impossible to compete.

You mentioned that alot of these standards are still in place. Once again, and I hate beat a dead horse (no pun intended), but you can trace SMU's athletic failures to one thing, the death penalty. It was never levied against a school before us and will never be hand down again because of the devastation it caused on the Hilltop. I hate it, but it is what it is.

[Stallion]

Let me be clear that as of last year I know of no real substantial obstacles to SMU suceeding although I have heard from the top that apparently there are some small wrinkles in the transfer area-. Following recruiting there are at least 10-15 examples specifically over the last year or year and a half in FB and BB that convince me that those restrictions are almost all gone. That's why you haven't heard the Model argument from me in about a year. It takes time for those changes to manifest themselves on the field.

[George S. Patton]

doherty has never been pleased with his effort on D and alex found his way into the doghouse bc of that...

Well, you can't get rid of everybody because the way this team has played defense this season has been downright disgraceful. Some of that is on the players. Some of that is on the staff.

When your team/staff do not reveal a willingness to be good on that end of the floor, you're going to get a lot of 6-11 and ding dong losses along the way.

[Stallion]

Doherty is going to get 5 years so you might want to sit back and enjoy it. He deserves to have an upperclass before we run him out of town.

[George S. Patton]

Doherty is going to get 5 years so you might want to sit back and enjoy it. He deserves to have an upperclass before we run him out of town.

I don't know about that. I can see 4. But if 4 goes the same way as the first three, then upperclass or not, it may not be enough to save him.

[LA_Mustang]

I'm sure he will get to see the 07 class play out and at that time if we are still muddling around .500 or below, he will be gone....which means he MUST have a couple of impact JUCOs come in next year and a stud freshman the next to save his job.

[gostangs]

The death penalty excuse is just that - an excuse. No way we should still be talking about it 25 yrs after the fact.

It should not be mentioned anymore if we are going to turn ourselves into winners. The recruiting shackles are off - the financial and facility committment has been made by our Trustess and some additonal very nice wealthy people - time to find some winners to join our teams and some good coaches t build the programs - if they are not here already.

Its hard to say you are building the BB program with loses to TCU, APB, Rice and ECU. We are in very bad need of a surprising win instead of a surprising loss. Next yr Doh will have three yrs of his recruits -there had better be some improvement by the middle of next season or the bigs will be huddling up again.

[Glenn Sosbee]

The death penalty excuse is just that - an excuse. No way we should still be talking about it 25 yrs after the fact.

It should not be mentioned anymore if we are going to turn ourselves into winners. The recruiting shackles are off - the financial and facility committment has been made by our Trustess and some additonal very nice wealthy people - time to find some winners to join our teams and some good coaches t build the programs - if they are not here already.

Its hard to say you are building the BB program with loses to TCU, APB, Rice and ECU. We are in very bad need of a surprising win instead of a surprising loss. Next yr Doh will have three yrs of his recruits -there had better be some improvement by the middle of next season or the bigs will be huddling up again.

It's actually closer to 21 years and you can't just pretend it never happened. You are right, things like money, facilities, and general support are improving. Although attendance is still awful.

As far as having the right people in place, well that's a scary thought to me right now. If we don't, then all that money will have been wasted and it could be 10 more years of misery. I'm not all that crazy about passing every down and having the worst defense in college football.