MBB game thread vs. McNeese

[PonyPride]

3-point shooting percentages

SMU: 38.9 (7/18)
McNeese: 22.7 (5/22)

[PonyPride]

SMU has limited McNeese to 6 points in the last 3:48

81-57

[Charleston Pony]

Almost 3 minutes now without a FG for SMU. Let's just not finish sloppy

[Charleston Pony]

Weathers with 3 blocks and I don't know how many times he's been blocked himself!

[PonyPride]

Todorovic becomes the fifth Mustang to hit at least one 3-pointer

SMU 84, McNeese 59

1:53 to go

[PonyPride]

With a free throw, Darius McBride makes it 10 Mustangs with at least one point

[PonyPride]

FINAL

SMU 86
McNeese 62

[Mustangs35SMU]

Solid W to start the year.

[Charleston Pony]

End of bench guys hurt the team's FT percentage there at the end but not a bad opening game. Almost everyone gets to play, team hits 40% from three but only 13 assists on 31 made FGs and 15 turnovers. Guys will need to be a lot better Friday vs Oregon to be competitive

[ponyboy]

We’ve got some great new additions.

[Charleston Pony]

Crowd was announced at 3259 which undoubtedly reflects season tickets sold, but I'm not sure how many of the 1500 actually came out for this game. Not a whole lot of excitement for this team yet but we've never had much support for early season cupcake games and that's part of how the 1500 came to be defined by the late "Old Mustang" Jim Crist. I see nobody played more than 25 minutes so it was good to see almost the entire bench emptied during that game.

[BUS]

A Dallas Sheriff said 2900 attendance but who really knows.

Folks, these guys could be good, like really good. The size and athleticism is way better than last year.

Slow start as could be expected but the chemistry will develop and hang on for a fun ride.

I never played b ball as you can't really hurt people while playing. So, take my comments as just an observation.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Crowd was announced at 3259 which undoubtedly reflects season tickets sold

That is a scary number.

[JasonB]

- The movement and activity on both sides of the court was better than it has been for years. This is a much quicker, athletic team. Way more physical as well. Nutall and the Weathers brothers bring the physical game up several notches.
- I think this will end up being the best defensive team we have had in quite a while.
- Both teams wanted to play a little chaotic and use their athleticism, so it is a little hard to judge this, but there weren't a ton of offensive sets run by SMU. A little bit of playground ball. It is going to kill KD's assist numbers this year. I'm still not convinced that we have good 3 point shooters, although Nutall shot better than I anticipated. Band, Todorovich, Nutall might be the three outlets we have. Outside shooting is going to hurt us against really good teams. But it was nice to see us be able to spark offense without relying on a Hunt alleyoop, because those don't happen against good teams.
- KD started really slow, just not very aggressive, but he played really hard second half. Awesome that we have capable ball handlers and can pull him for extended stretches of the game.
- Nutall - are we really going to use him as a scorer off the bench? He is too good to bring off the bench. Way more active defensively than I expected. I would expect him to be the 2 and Michael W and Band to fight for the number 3.
- Band versus Michael W is interesting. Band I think plays better positional defense, but Weathers is all over the place defensively and very active with his hands to force turnovers. Really good pressing option. Offensively, Band can hit a three. Weathers isn't a spot up shooter. Band can drive and finish given space. Weathers is going to force that drive every single time. Michael is going to be a turnover machine, but also generate turnovers. It will be interesting to see where the balance is. He is going to attract so much attention on drives that it should leave his brother and Clark some offensive rebounding opportunities. But he is kind of the reason why it looked so playground out there. Not sure how it is going to work out against some of the better teams? He is certainly going to fill every single line on the stat sheet though - some points, boards, steals, turnovers, fouls.
- Marcus Weathers toughness is great. First real, legit 4 we have had here in quite a while. He is small, I get it, but the physical part of the game is great.
- Jasey is a nice physical big off the bench. Especially if he is diving on the floor like that. His offensive game is not going to happen, those first shots were terrible. Clark is obviously going to be the starter. Interesting to see if his body recovered properly, that is a major test for him. Clark is really rusty defensively. He is going to need to mop that up to start.

For the record, I think we will get drilled by Oregon, but let's see what happened. Maybe we can create enough chaos to keep it close.

[PonyTime]

Though they may look a little better than last year - Still a long, long way off from Larry's teams winning by 35-40 over the cupcakes in home openers in front of almost 7,000 SMU fans.

I agree - they will get drilled by Oregon if they play like they did last night. And, yes, Nuttal should be starting.