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Let me start this out by saying I am a huge SMU fan and supporter. I have watched every game this season and supported them well before they became relevant like many of you here. But watching the last 3 games there have been a few things I have picked up on and want to see if my fellow Mustangs agree with my observations

1) We start the game and first half very slowly, all three NIT games we get down about 10 points and get outplayed pretty well. But every game we always make a run before halftime and always play so much better in the first half. Watching these games, it baffles me how we start so slow and finish so well, I would love your feedback on this because it baffles me at times

2) Keith Frazier has improved leap and bounds from the start of the season and its great to see him so confident!! combine him with Mudiay and Moore and that's a scary trio no one will want to face

3) Don't get me wrong, I love seeing Moody packed and all the support we have had this year considering I remember how it used to be. Its great for our school and team to have this support. At times though, part of me is like, where were all these fans over the last few years? It just seems to me like there are a lot of fair weather fans now that we are winning, so when announcers and analysts say how crazy our fan base is, I think its a little off base. I do think Moody is a very very tough place for opponents to play, but the question is in the future if we have a bad season or two, will these same fans be here? Again, this sounds negative and its not meant to be at all, I love SMU just as much as the rest of you, just an observation over this past year.

Cant wait till the NIT semifinals next week!!

You mean people show up to support a good, winning team? I never knew that!! Every team has it's fair weather fans. This isn't something new..

TyDerby wrote:Let me start this out by saying I am a huge SMU fan and supporter. I have watched every game this season and supported them well before they became relevant like many of you here. But watching the last 3 games there have been a few things I have picked up on and want to see if my fellow Mustangs agree with my observations

1) We start the game and first half very slowly, all three NIT games we get down about 10 points and get outplayed pretty well. But every game we always make a run before halftime and always play so much better in the first half. Watching these games, it baffles me how we start so slow and finish so well, I would love your feedback on this because it baffles me at times

2) Keith Frazier has improved leap and bounds from the start of the season and its great to see him so confident!! combine him with Mudiay and Moore and that's a scary trio no one will want to face

3) Don't get me wrong, I love seeing Moody packed and all the support we have had this year considering I remember how it used to be. Its great for our school and team to have this support. At times though, part of me is like, where were all these fans over the last few years? It just seems to me like there are a lot of fair weather fans now that we are winning, so when announcers and analysts say how crazy our fan base is, I think its a little off base. I do think Moody is a very very tough place for opponents to play, but the question is in the future if we have a bad season or two, will these same fans be here? Again, this sounds negative and its not meant to be at all, I love SMU just as much as the rest of you, just an observation over this past year.

Cant wait till the NIT semifinals next week!!

Put any "good school" to lose and they miraculously lose their fans. Florida sucked this year so now everybody is a Florida State fan...until the Gators win another national championship and everyone starts jumping back on. Like here in Texas, everyone loved TCU during Rose Bowl era...they started suckin and now everyone loves Baylor once they got better..

Welcome to the board Ty

TyDerby wrote:Let me start this out by saying I am a huge SMU fan and supporter. I have watched every game this season and supported them well before they became relevant like many of you here. But watching the last 3 games there have been a few things I have picked up on and want to see if my fellow Mustangs agree with my observations

1) We start the game and first half very slowly, all three NIT games we get down about 10 points and get outplayed pretty well. But every game we always make a run before halftime and always play so much better in the first half. Watching these games, it baffles me how we start so slow and finish so well, I would love your feedback on this because it baffles me at times

2) Keith Frazier has improved leap and bounds from the start of the season and its great to see him so confident!! combine him with Mudiay and Moore and that's a scary trio no one will want to face

3) Don't get me wrong, I love seeing Moody packed and all the support we have had this year considering I remember how it used to be. Its great for our school and team to have this support. At times though, part of me is like, where were all these fans over the last few years? It just seems to me like there are a lot of fair weather fans now that we are winning, so when announcers and analysts say how crazy our fan base is, I think its a little off base. I do think Moody is a very very tough place for opponents to play, but the question is in the future if we have a bad season or two, will these same fans be here? Again, this sounds negative and its not meant to be at all, I love SMU just as much as the rest of you, just an observation over this past year.

Cant wait till the NIT semifinals next week!!

When you drop games at home to South Carolina Upstate, it is hard to get people excited about the program.

its a perfect storm of having a good team, coach and new arena. it all came together at exactly the right time. i can't think of another time in smu history when everything went right.

Everyone on this board knows how heartbreaking it can be out there for Mustang fans. I went to games as a student and watched my team get pummeled, year after year. I understood why a lot of my friends weren't interested. We've done a lot of losing. Now that MBB is doing a lot of winning, I don't blame the students for coming out of the woodwork. They finally have something to cheer for.

My hope is that eventually, it will become about cheering for the team, not just the W. But that takes time and a consistent program.

TyDerby wrote:1) We start the game and first half very slowly, all three NIT games we get down about 10 points and get outplayed pretty well. But every game we always make a run before halftime and always play so much better in the first half. Watching these games, it baffles me how we start so slow and finish so well, I would love your feedback on this because it baffles me at times

We finish so well because of our depth. Opponents come hard and fast with their starting 5 which has put us down early. By the end of the first half, their 5 begin to slow or their bench starts racking up minutes, and it has been a sharp drop off in terms of talent level between starting 5 and bench. In some cases, the talent level improves for SMU when our bench comes in. For example, Ndiaye stifled Kennedy's under the basket offense; however, Cunningham pulled him out from under the basket and forced him to defend a mid-range jump shot leading to what I thought was CC's greatest game.

I attribute the slow start to rhythm, or the lack thereof early.

I think there are some truths to OP 's points. Her are my thoughts on ech:

1) I think we start slow because when you break it down SMU has a very easy offense to game plan against. If you crowd the lane and play tight on Nic Moore. We really aren't a very good shooting team and the offense struggles if you take awaye our only consistant offensive weapons (Kennedy and Moore). In the first half the opponent has the most energy and is able to execute this plan as good as they will be able to all game. As the game goes on it's harder to keep us out of the inside and it's harder to fight through the screens and ball movement so we start becoming more efficient. Also it's later in the game that our 9-10 man rotation begins to pay dividends.

2) Keith is a good player. He still has a long way to go but a lot of people were in a panic when he started the season on a shooting slump. He is definitely out of the shooting slump and you can see why he was a highly touted recruit. That said if we wants to be more then a bench player he needs to get much better defensively. I think his attitude on the court is so positive that I can't imagine he is not willing to put the work in to become the great player he can be. if Keith gets to the point where his defense lets him play 24 minutes a game hell start averaging 12+ points a game for sure and will really help stretch the defense and create driving lanes for Eman.

3) We have to build a great fan base and that's what is happening. Remember we lost almost 2 full generations of fans when we basically opted out of competitive athletics. A good team get's them in the building, a great product and experience get's them addicted and makes people fans for life. Every time I look at the student section I just think of a whole generation of SMU alumni who will go out into the world and be proud SMU fans. They wll teach there kids to SMU fans and they will come back to support the team voer the course of their whole lives. That is how a fan base gets I think this will be the first group of students who could look forward to that in almost 30 years. That is how you get a fan base that is there in good times and bad.

TyDerby wrote:I do think Moody is a very very tough place for opponents to play, but the question is in the future if we have a bad season or two, will these same fans be here? Again, this sounds negative and its not meant to be at all, I love SMU just as much as the rest of you, just an observation over this past year.

Ty, the issue isn't if SMU has a bad season or two. The degree of ineptitude with our FBI/BB teams is of Biblical proportions.

0-50-1 vs Big XII south in FB, this years' BB team defeating more ranked teams than the past 25 years combined. We have stunk for so long it is virtually impossible to compare us to other programs.

Just enjoy the ride and hope that the powers that be will never allow us to perform so miserably in the future. LB has shown us what can be done here. He is correct when he says this is a terrific school, location, campus, etc. Love that he backs it up with having his kids (son & hopefully daughter) both attending SMU as well.

I've never blamed SMU fan support for being non-existent, at least not too much. The school made NO attempt to compete, and so the fans didn't care. This is not a case of the chicken-or-the-egg; it HAS to be the school who initiates momentum for the program, not the average ticket-buying fans. But I always felt if you gave us a winner, we would show up in droves.

We started fast in our last 3 games before the nit and lost all 3...it's not a trend, but all within the realm of stastical variance.

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Pony_Law wrote: . A good team get's them in the building, a great product and experience get's them addicted and makes people fans for life.

Perhaps somebody should remind ALL of those responsible for the fball program that this is how it works.

Model
Coach and Staff
Recruiting
Then Winning
Presentation
Fans

in that order-it took 2 decades to build the foundation-a winning Model

We've been waiting years to explode as a fan base. It's finally here after going through torture for decades