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The biggest game of the year will be in March if we make the cut. We have come up short twice now and we absolutely MUST win and advance. Those are the games you recruit with and the ones everyone remembers.

Pony ^ wrote:USC is by far the bigger game. I don't think we compete that much with TCU in regards to players. Has there ever been a player that comes down to choosing TCU or SMU?

There is right now.

Safe to say it is on.

LA_Mustang wrote:Everett Ray came down to SMU vs. TCU and one of our biggest 2018 targets has TCU very high on his list. Jamie Dixon can recruit.

Dixon wasn't getting it done at Pitt before he "left".

flockofseagulls wrote:

Pony ^ wrote:USC is by far the bigger game. I don't think we compete that much with TCU in regards to players. Has there ever been a player that comes down to choosing TCU or SMU?

you better believe there will be plenty of players in that situation if we let tcu onto our level.

the tcu game is about holding ground and protecting the progress that the program has already made. the usc game is about gaining more ground. and frankly the most important ground to gain comes in march and april. so as silly as some may think it sounds, i think the tcu game is bigger in the long term.

anyone still willing to claim there's a bigger game than TCU on our schedule now???

Pony ^ wrote:USC is by far the bigger game. I don't think we compete that much with TCU in regards to players. Has there ever been a player that comes down to choosing TCU or SMU?

Kaden Archie says hi

Karen Archie can sit on the bench and sulk while we destroy tcu after coming off of a win against USC

Yes, USC is still the biggest game. They will likely be Top 10 when they roll into Moody.
Rarely do you get a chance at NCAA revenge.
We play TCU every year. It's still a big game in its own right. But USC is top billing for 2017-18.

re: USC - i'm just of the mind that your biggest game will never be one that, if you lose, no bad comes of it.

Would be more of an "opportunity lost" type of situation than "bad". We need some non-conference resume builders and USC, Atlantis and maybe TCU certainly provide that for us this year.

Losing to TCU would be "bad" in a different sense of course.

flockofseagulls wrote:anyone still willing to claim there's a bigger game than TCU on our schedule now???

Still USC. Going forward, I don't expect we'll be competing with TCU for much of anything other than who wins the bottom half of the DMN sports page the day after the game. We'll be good, they'll be good and no one will make the slightest connection at the national level where we are a definite radar team now.

I could argue TCU will be bigger game, because we are going to have a real tough time beating USC, even though its at home. They are better than last year (return everyone) with more pieces. At that stage of the season I'm not sure if we will have fully meshed with all the new pieces. We were just meshing at that point last year with a much more experienced team. We won't have McMurray yet and might not have Agau.

Obviously USC game is a bigger deal, game and would be a bigger win, but we need a good OOC win and USC looks like a preseason top 10 team while TCU is still a much easier game against a good team. By season end we might be a top 25 team (we are talented), but not sure we will be less than a month into the season with 3 returning players without McMurray and maybe without Agau (or at least with a rusty/getting into playing shape Agau).

I think we are a tourney team, but we will have some growing pains.

My basketball brain can’t write as well as PLE but if it could, I would’ve said it exactly the same way. Spot on.

And DSJ is the truth.

PonyLawExpress wrote:we are going to have a real tough time beating USC, even though its at home. They are better than last year (return everyone) with more pieces.

Maybe.

There could be some eligibility issues with more than one of their returning players.