WaPo: SMU finding meaning in lost season
Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 2:54 pmDALLAS — Amid a weird country, a plucky team conducts a familiar experiment. The Southern Methodist University men’s basketball team tries to wring meaning from a season spent in the glum hallways of the NCAA hoosegow.
Those hallways lead to March 6 at Cincinnati, the Mustangs’ 30th and final game, where the end is dead: no conference or NCAA tournament, a reality since the NCAA ruled SMU unruly last September. So they exert to honor their seniors in the present. As the experience of postseason-banned predecessors like the mighty North Carolina State 1972-73 indicates, the future may well forget them.
Yet curious things have happened. The Mustangs have pleased hoop-addled eyes, not just because that seer Larry Brown coaches them, and not just because their seven remaining scholarship players make a harder puzzle of the new 30-second shot clock. Their likability shows in a plus-11.4 rebounding margin and an outstanding 5-foot-9 point guard, Nic Moore. They won when they made zero three-point shots to Colorado’s 12. They won when they began with zero defensive rebounds against Houston’s 11 offensive rebounds. They stand at No. 13 in the AP rankings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spo ... st-season/
Those hallways lead to March 6 at Cincinnati, the Mustangs’ 30th and final game, where the end is dead: no conference or NCAA tournament, a reality since the NCAA ruled SMU unruly last September. So they exert to honor their seniors in the present. As the experience of postseason-banned predecessors like the mighty North Carolina State 1972-73 indicates, the future may well forget them.
Yet curious things have happened. The Mustangs have pleased hoop-addled eyes, not just because that seer Larry Brown coaches them, and not just because their seven remaining scholarship players make a harder puzzle of the new 30-second shot clock. Their likability shows in a plus-11.4 rebounding margin and an outstanding 5-foot-9 point guard, Nic Moore. They won when they made zero three-point shots to Colorado’s 12. They won when they began with zero defensive rebounds against Houston’s 11 offensive rebounds. They stand at No. 13 in the AP rankings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/spo ... st-season/