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What defines success this year....?

I say we go undefeated and finish in Top 5-10?

Team is clearly capable --- BEST TEAM that I have witnessed since coming to SMU in 1985...

F the NCAA

I'm all for a mythical national championship!

One game at a time.

But, by all means, F*** The NCAA.

Run the table

If we have the best team since Carl Wright and Butcher Moore and the NCAA has stopped us from going to the tournament while our 3 of our best players will graduate it would seem like they are messing over us not us messing over them. We can try to dress it up all we want but we may never have a team as good as this team is again. But only time will tell. One thing is for sure is that as soon as we play our last game the networks will pretty much stop talking about us. I know that will break some of our hearts but some of useed to be ready for that to happen.

Rebel10 wrote:If we have the best team since Carl Wright and Butcher Moore and the NCAA has stopped us from going to the tournament while our 3 of our best players will graduate it would seem like they are messing over us not us messing over them. We can try to dress it up all we want but we may never have a team as good as this team is again. But only time will tell. One thing is for sure is that as soon as we play our last game the networks will pretty much stop talking about us. I know that will break some of our hearts but some of useed to be ready for that to happen.

Which of us need to be ready for that and why not all of us?

mustangxc wrote:I'm all for a mythical national championship!

Good one.

We won't come close to undefeated, I'd doubt. We're a buzzsaw at times, but we've been lackluster at times as well. Win the regular season, need a banner

If we finish with the best record in the AAC, will the conference recognize us as the regular season champions even though we're on probation?

Yes

Okay, good. I had never seen that addressed.

hoopmanx wrote:We won't come close to undefeated, I'd doubt. We're a buzzsaw at times, but we've been lackluster at times as well. Win the regular season, need a banner

Would you agree that Yale is a better team than all of the teams at the bottom of our conference (USF, UCF, Tulane, ECU)? If so even a lack luster performance in on the road against these teams we should still win. Then you have a group of teams in our conference that are probably better than TCU but not particularly good either either (Temple, Memphis, Houston, and Tulsa). I would imagine we would beat these teams at home even with a bad night (like the level against TCU) and we would have a decent chance to beat them on the road as well. If SMU does get up for these games we should sweep them pretty easily. Then you have the two other teams in our conference that are good UCONN and Cinnci. I don't have any worry of SMU being up for the games at moody. We should also have no problem for the remaining non conference so long as the team is not drunk/hung over for the 2nd game in vegas.

So in my mind there are 3 games on the schedule that SMU could lose without it being because we blew it: Gonzaga, Cinnci on the road, and UCONN on the road. If we play like we did against michigan (with MK) I think we can win those 3 games. That is a big if but it is certainly possible.

Overall I see Smu finishing with between 0 and 5 losses on the year.

Running the table is really hard for any team, and this team has weaknesses that are being glossed over. The biggest one is just the length of the bench (short as hell). That will play out over the season. If we are playing Cinn or UConn and lose MK in minute one it is a whole different story. Number two is post height. Tolbert and MK haven't had to deal with a really athletic 7 footer. we lose our rebound advantage and have some defensive issues when that happens.

Its a nice dream but don't get stuck on it. Usually there is a toe stub along the way for any team, and there is nothing yet that says we are better than Cinn or UConn. Michigan is not as great as everyone says, and Yale is solid but not anything to get excited about. We really haven't taken down anyone of note.

By the way - much more worried about any of our conference road games vs the top three teams (Cinn/Conn/Memphis) than I am with Gonzaga. Zags are pretty beatable in Moody for us in my view.

Plus, Gonzaga's strength is in the middle. They have three really good bigs all over 6' 10". They will be a matchup nightmare for us.

I'm actually more worried about the Gonzaga game. Gonzaga is a potential matchup problem for us as they have a very good front court. If we have any kind of foul trouble with our bigs we could be in trouble.