TheTastyGreek

Depends on what you mean by "quality" win. From an RPI perspective, the Texas Tech win wasn't that much better than the one over Rice. FAU and WKU beat Hofstra (current RPI: 89). UALR beat Tulsa (current RPI: 92). 12 teams in the Sun Belt, 12-14 OOC games apiece, and those are our only 3 wins against teams with RPIs better than 100. As a conference, we also have 3 losses to current RPI 300+ and non-D1 teams. Not a good year.

It's a bracket style contest to pick the best College Football movie. Besides, everyone knows the greatest sports movie of all time is Air Bud 6: Performance Enhancing Pugs.

I'd say it's unbelievable... But no OOC failure is truly unbelievable given what we've seen already this year. Savannah State, Utah Valley, Texas College, and now Houston Baptist. Disgusting.

It makes me sick to acknowledge this, but I was only saying that we wouldn't be in a play-in game. If we were to somehow win out on 7 straight games, we could get up to about 118-125 RPI and get a 16 seed outright. A strong finishing FAU may be the conference's best and only hope for a 15 seed at this point. I don't see 6 teams with RPIs lower than 110-115 AND worse conference RPIs AND inferior tournament resumes making the field this year. I'm still going to Hot Springs and I still think we've got enough talent to contend. But we're down to 8 scholarship players, one of those needs knee surgery, another is a walking injury report that gets braced and taped together well enough to go out and keep adding new injuries to his list, and another is occasional boot-wearer Josh White. We have 5 guys who are "healthy", as far as we know. Can't say my expectations are very high right at the moment.

He warmed up on our end of the court before the 2nd half, and he had 2 or 3 fingers completely immobilized with tape (and what looked like a splint). Held that hand out from his body, never touched anything or anyone with it, and only warmed up with one hand. When he came in for his one shift in the 2nd half, he tried using both hands... But his one shot came up very short, and an attempted pass in to him bounced off him and went out of bounds. Then he got pulled. Whatever happened, he either broke it or severely aggravated a hairline break at some point in the 1st half against ULM.

The conference is getting what it deserves this year. A lot of coaches (Scott and Brady, most egregiously) admitted before the year even started that all they cared about was being ready for conference play. Isiah Thomas is so busy trying to get back to the Knicks that he can't handle Utah Valley. Brady chokes against Savannah State. Even Bob Marlin dropped a game to an NAIA before conference play started. Aside from us... Take a year of OOC mediocrity (and only 2 or 3 instances of that- WKU, FAU, UALR) to outright misery, throw in league parity and bad in-conference losses dragging down the teams that managed to get through OOC with not-awful RPI rankings... And what you get is a league where the champion is going to, at best, finish with an RPI in the 105-115 range. 2nd best RPI contender could maybe claw back up to about 125. That's 16 seed range, right there. I really thought that ASU, USA, WKU, FAU, and us would make this a banner year for Sun Belt basketball. Instead, ASU did worse than nothing, WKU and FAU went about .500, and USA joined us in a conference season meltdown. The 150 rule came along one year too late. I'm also hopeful that, with Denver leaving, we go to non-divisional play and everyone plays 20 conference games. That leaves 8-9 OOC games instead of 13 this year, allowing conference members to schedule more selectively and spend their resources on a higher percentage of OOC home games. Basically, if we go to non-divisional play, terrible teams have 1/3rd fewer chances to go out and suck, and they have to use their OOC paycheck games more selectively. FIU can still get checks to play FSU and Louisville, but 4-5 fewer OOC games means they probably don't even want to schedule UVU. 150 rule. Non-divisional conference play. Coaches who aspire to more than a fluke 3-4 game win streak in March. There's hope. But nobody in this league deserves anything higher than the worst 15 seed. Other than us and FAU, anyone who gets in the tournament will probably be in the play-in game. It's shameful, I think it's the first time anyone representing the SBC will have ever been a 16 seed... But it's totally deserved.

Ughhhhhh.... Just when he starts really figuring out how to function in the offense and developing his inside game.

I'd put it even with the coach retention. It's one thing to lose a lot of teenagers and early twentysomethings who may not like you and may not want to continue with their sport. It's another thing entirely when a lot of people who are depending on the program to earn their living decide that one year is about all they care to spend working alongside you.

Ship. Singular. Just one. Otherwise, +1.

This time of year tends to be when things start getting busier for me. Super Bowl blew out a week, and I haven't had a chance to record at any of our possible times in the weeks since. Unless CBL is unavailable, there WILL be a podcast this week.

Not trying to be contentious, I hope you know by now that I have a lot of respect for your opinion even when I don't share it... But having one open scholarship going into the school year, when you nearly closed on (at the very least) Armelin and Carmouche, doesn't strike me as a terrible tactical blunder. Rather than throwing it at any warm body still available, we had it in reserve to use for a potential midyear transfer. Knowing (as I know you do) that we were rumored to be in on at least 4 potential Big 12 transfers, NOT including actual midyear transfer Shawn Williams... I don't see having one open ship on a team that didn't seem to have a lot of minutes for anyone outside the 12 scholarship players on the roster as the school year began. McGhee was not an academic time bomb as far any of us knew. If ANYONE expressed any anxiety over his class performance, I don't remember reading it here or anywhere else that I check in on regularly. Given that he graduated high school and passed the NCAA clearinghouse with no issues, I can only imagine that whatever attitude or academic problems popped up in the first week of school were a surprise to the coaching staff as well. If we had actually sat on two ships, I'd probably be more upset about the depth situation right now. But for a team with seven scholarship seniors to have one open ship, given the rebuilding effort ahead and the potential reinforcements supposedly ready to transfer... That's no great outrage to me. Given that we missed out on at least four worthy scholarship athletes, it seems (both at the time and in hindsight) like a wise move under the circumstances. For anyone who is furious that we had one open scholarship entering the season... Just go ahead and pretend that Avery Redmond is/was on scholarship. And that the ship was now tied up for 3 more years. Because that may very well have been the talent level of anyone available to fill that scholarship at the time.

This may be the only time I smiled about something related to NT basketball in the past 24 hours. +1

Like J'mison Morgan. Or Chris Babb. Or Charles Carmouche. Or Chip Armelin. Though we may need to git sum pitchin', nobody can say we weren't trying to get some at the time. Even Jay-R Strowbridge had hopscotched twice by then.

Disgrace. Disgrace. Disgrace. Disgrace. Severe disappointment.

One ship. One ship was open. Just one. The other came open after the school year started.

Obviously, you're wrong. There's at least one way.

Who exactly do you think is pleased right now?

Middle vs. UALR is on ESPN3 right now.

In the past 5 weeks, Troy has home wins against WKU, us, Middle Tennessee, and Denver. Meanwhile, all 5 of ASU's conference losses have come on the road. Their only road win that didn't come against ULM was in Little Rock, Arkansas. ASU lost on the road to a godawful Savannah State team about 2 weeks ago. If any of you are sports gamblers... It might be worth looking at the line in this game and making an appropriate wager.

I don't forsee a blowout, that's not usually our style even when we're fully manned. But I do think this absolutely needs to be a win, and should be one. If we do get out to a healthy lead, we'll probably slow down the pace to try and minimize fatigue. If Monroe is as terrible as they were at Denver, blowout.

Don't forget RJ McGhee. If Alonzo is on the shelf, we're down to 8 available scholarship players, and our best walk-on is out for the year, too.

If it helps, I think Mangrum played as much while he was here as medically possible. Considering how some of his knee issues were re-aggravated... Possibly MORE than was medically possible.

What was his tree-poisoning quota?

I think we're skirting the real issue. My sympathies go out to the biggest victims: The Keebler Elves. This is like September 11th for them. Never Fudge-get, people.

My biggest wish in life is to see shirtless Craigslist photos of UNTFlyer. This is the first step to making that happen. Best of luck, sir.