Greendylan

It's funny because this feels like something George would have come up with for the Yankees.

Also, if a low seed ends up winning your tournament, they would have to have won so many games in a row that they probably (by that point) would have a respectable record going into the NCAA tournament.

All three ranked teams that were in action tonight lost, and all three were on the road. It helps us in some small ways that two of the three winners were teams NT has beaten. But, I think the bigger lesson here is just how damn hard it is to win on the road.

I assume it's the "efficiency" factor in the NET equation that benefited from last night. That or the results of other games impacted this. Not totally sure, but it's a good question.

For the life of me, I couldn't tell you. The t-shirts had the flying worm, I guess, but I wasn't one of the lucky few who snagged one. Oh well, fun game to watch...

On the bright side, as a fan in attendance, this is excellent emotional preparation for the beatdown coming on Friday.

Sissoko with the double-double. He's rebounded really well the past couple games. Hopefully that carries over into conference play against stronger post players.

When Brock Vice came in I was eager to see what he could do in the paint, and . . . he proceeded to jack up two 3-pointers that missed. Oh well, overall I was impressed with how (relatively) polished the bench players looked in garbage time.

Great game right now between Memphis and Clemson. I'm also interested to see how Wichita State does at DePaul.

Really good points! The NIL era doesn't have to mean the end of competitive Mean Green football. There are available strategic moves that we can make, and careful roster management is one of them. Transparent crowd funding is another. If you look across the board, G5 conference teams aren't any less competitive than they were pre-NIL. NT, however, seems to be a couple years behind the learning curve, and as a result, we're one of the hardest hit by the portal each year. But, this is a fixable problem.

It's not going to be easy, and it will take innovation, persuasion, and a lot of strategic thinking--but I don't think it's fair to say "never." Also, UNT does have some advantages, such as being a massive school in a prosperous part of the country. I'm not suggesting that we should be competing with A&M in NIL dollars by next season. But, I think moving up from bottom 3 to the middle of the AAC is an attainable goal, if the fundraising efforts are done effectively and aggressively. We are not helpless in all this.

Right, but UTSA didn't either. Then they did . . . because they raised the money. I'm just saying the AD, the collectives they work with, and our alums all need to get a lot better at playing this game. It's not a static reality that we now and forever will be bottom three in the conference.

Sure, finding the billionaire who wants to make the Mean Green his passion project would be the ideal scenario. But, accruing lots of small donations from regular people is also an important piece of the puzzle--or at least is a stopgap until our AD can convince the millionaires and billionaires of DFW to get involved.

Pure speculation, but might he and others on offense have been distracted by negotiations with their new employers?

OK, but UTSA was able to keep their star QB for his final season by getting together enough NIL money to make it worth his while to stay. This isn't directed at you, but overall the sentiment among our fanbase seems to be that we don't like the idea of NIL, so we're not going to participate. Then we're shocked when we can't compete with the programs whose fans care a whole lot more. You get what you pay for, I suppose...

I honestly would be surprised if a single offensive starter with eligibility left plays in the bowl game. This is why it sucks to be playing an in-state opponent. We were always destined to be playing with the 2nd team offense and getting blown out. That was going to happen against any opponent, so doing it against a school from across the country that we don't really recruit against would at least mitigate that damage.

Yeah, but to be fair, there aren't too many bowl eligible teams that don't at least play decent football--at least in comparison to this current iteration of NT.

You're probably right, but going into this game I still thought the possibility was there that NT could finish with a strong enough non-conference performance that a dominating run through the AAC (unlikely as that would be) could be enough to be a bubble team. Let's finish strong with the upcoming home non-con games and then see if we're still in the 50s-60s in NET. If so, things could get interesting at some point.

It's not a terrible loss, but sadly, being a non-power-conference team, it does mean we have probably eliminated ourselves from at-large tournament contention.

They are barely top 200 right now, but that'll increase if they keep winning the way they have for more than a year now. By the end of the season, I predict this will be a Quad 2 game for us, so a win would be VERY helpful. But, I think some of us are underestimating them. They are like McNeese in that they won a ton of games last year and almost never lose at home. As of this morning, NT is favored by just 2.5, and I think that's about right. Also...I think UAB is better than average, even though they did stumble out of the gate a bit. They still have talent...

I can't believe there's this much gnashing of teeth over Utah State. Once everyone gets into the heart of their conference schedule, they'll drop some in NET, even if they keep winning, as power conference teams' SOS steadily increase. But, they were a 28-win at-large tournament team last year who easily beat TCU in the first round. They finished the season ranked 22 in the AP poll. Their NET ranking right now, while maybe a little inflated (which is a necessary symptom of small sample sizes), isn't really THAT out of line with perception. They are 8-0 and probably will get to 11-0 before they face three tough road games in a row. The other day I mentioned a few kinda/sorta under the radar non-power-conference teams to keep an eye on, and I didn't even mention Utah State because I thought that was obvious. Falslev is no joke...

Absolutely. Despite the struggles of the defense the past couple years, Rod Brown has consistently been one of the bright spots, and I shudder to think of where we would be at this point if he hadn't been back.

Good call.

Tulane is really struggling. Just lost their 4th in a row and have been beaten by both of the other New Orleans area schools on their schedule.

I really think that MTSU, UCI, and Drake will be the non-power-conference teams that will be big topics of conversation in March (outside of the usual suspects).