geezerdonk wrote:Poor old George has nothing better to do on Saturday. Two awful teams; two terrible programs.
Watched this game with a neighbor who moved here from Normal, Illinois and is a big Illinois State fan and his comment was "how many teams in college hoops can say they have a former POTUS sitting courtside?" Politics aside, it's another factor in what makes the SMU job attractive for the right guy.
McMurray and Mike were on tonight and good thing because Dunleavy is a good coach who, given a 2nd chance to play anyone is going to have his team better prepared for the rematch. I just don't see him ever being able to attract enough talent to Tulane to make that program competitive in this league.
1) Just think about what the score would have been if McMurray wasn't on his game. And Mike hitting from three.
2) We were way more athletic then Tulane, there is no reason to allow the game to be that close. They hit some shots tonight, but it is a bad team.
3) I know there are a lot of comments on the offense and how we don't seem to run a lot of plays. But I think a bigger issue is that we are a very poorly coached team defensively. Very poor. Players are out of position and super confused, especially down low. The effort picked up the last ten minutes, and we were able to use our athleticism to shut them down and turn them over at that point, which was nice to see. But it really covered up how out of position we were on that end of the court.
Overall, this is just a very poorly coached team. Jank talks about a lack of seniors, but that is pretty much a problem at every single good program in the country. He doesn't have enough attention to detail in practice to enable his younger players to play good defense. LB was bad cop to his good cop, but not having the bad cop to blow the whistle every time someone screws up in practice is killing the defensive abilities of the team. For him to be successful, he either needs to be a good cop as an assistant or he needs a task master on his staff to keep everything in line. That isn't the case right now.
JasonB wrote:1) Just think about what the score would have been if McMurray wasn't on his game. And Mike hitting from three.
2) We were way more athletic then Tulane, there is no reason to allow the game to be that close. They hit some shots tonight, but it is a bad team.
3) I know there are a lot of comments on the offense and how we don't seem to run a lot of plays. But I think a bigger issue is that we are a very poorly coached team defensively. Very poor. Players are out of position and super confused, especially down low. The effort picked up the last ten minutes, and we were able to use our athleticism to shut them down and turn them over at that point, which was nice to see. But it really covered up how out of position we were on that end of the court.
Overall, this is just a very poorly coached team. Jank talks about a lack of seniors, but that is pretty much a problem at every single good program in the country. He doesn't have enough attention to detail in practice to enable his younger players to play good defense. LB was bad cop to his good cop, but not having the bad cop to blow the whistle every time someone screws up in practice is killing the defensive abilities of the team. For him to be successful, he either needs to be a good cop as an assistant or he needs a task master on his staff to keep everything in line. That isn't the case right now.
LB was prone to blowing that whistle and stopping practice to "teach". We may never have another coach like Larry.
Charleston Pony wrote:McMurray and Mike were on tonight and good thing because Dunleavy is a good coach who, given a 2nd chance to play anyone is going to have his team better prepared for the rematch. I just don't see him ever being able to attract enough talent to Tulane to make that program competitive in this league.
Why is Tulane any different than other solid academic private universities? Is it more Rice-like? Lacks NOLA fan support?
Maybe Dunleavy isn't that great a coach. 17 years in the NBA and a career .461 record. Tulane was 14-17 last year and is 4–15 (0–7 AAC) now. Sure, he's excited that they played SMU well for most of the game but can they win some games down the stretch?
Charleston Pony wrote:McMurray and Mike were on tonight and good thing because Dunleavy is a good coach who, given a 2nd chance to play anyone is going to have his team better prepared for the rematch. I just don't see him ever being able to attract enough talent to Tulane to make that program competitive in this league.
Why is Tulane any different than other solid academic private universities? Is it more Rice-like? Lacks NOLA fan support?
Maybe Dunleavy isn't that great a coach. 17 years in the NBA and a career .461 record. Tulane was 14-17 last year and is 4–15 (0–7 AAC) now. Sure, he's excited that they played SMU well for most of the game but can they win some games down the stretch?
“he's excited that they played SMU well for most of the game”
Not sure why he’s happy, it doesn’t mean much anymore. If this was the performance two years ago in Moody then I would totally agree.
Did anyone else catch the shenanigans in the second half when SMU went on the run, Dunleavy stepped on the court to tell his players to dribble to his spot and call the TO to stop momentum, then when they got there backed off the court and waved them to play on as the SMU players started to walk a bit towards the bench? They didn't end up scoring, but I thought it was kind of a cheap play.
Looking at the remaining schedule - where is our next win? I guess McMurray could go off at some point and we could steal one, but in all honesty there is a decent chance that could have been our last victory of the year.
We are capable of losing the rest of our games but we just might be capable of beating Wichita State at their place Wednesday night so who knows? Which team shows up night to night? Not sure we will win any on the road but I think these guys will win at least a couple more games at Moody. UConn and Wichita State are best chances because neither team has won a road game yet.
We'll either go 6-5 or 5-6 and finish up with 17 or 18 wins and maybe get 1 win in the conference tourney. I don't think either of those records get us into the NIT and so it will be another no post-season play year....2 in a row after making the post-season every year for the past 5 had not the NCAA unfairly punished us.
If we do not land a stellar recruiting class then I see no reason to keep Jankovich any longer. We have enough talent now to be a 20 win team and with the right 1 or 2 pieces we can be right back in the conference championship mix, but it's got to start turning around now (not 1 year from now or else we'll be in total rebuild mode).
Next year's recruiting class is a JUCO player with 0 other D1 offers who's ranked approx. ~46-48th among JUCO prospects, a very lightly recruited developmental shooting guard, and a lightly recruited PG coming off a major health scare.
