BillySee58

I haven't seen our standalone P&L for basketball, but from what I've seen you are right. Point is, given how much we have invested in Mccasland, he needs to be making the NCAA tournament under his contract for this to be a good contract. And for that to happen, we likely have to win the CUSA tourney given the conference we are in. Otherwise we could have paid a cheaper coach to come in and be competitive here but not actually win the conference tourney. Mccasland's pay means he should be more than that.

Was he getting paid the way Mccasland was relative to the other Sun Belt coaches? I don't know. Either way, the investment was not on par with Mccasland. You're giving him more than a season. So is everyone else. Sounds like you're implying I'm not. That's not the truth. Point is, we're heavily invested in Mccasland and, given that this has been a one-bid league for a while, the conference tournament results are a heavy portion of determining how good or bad an investment he ends up being. If you include the Arkansas State buyout and prorate it over his contract, we are investing more annually in Mccasland than what MTSU pays Kermit Davis, more than what WKU pays Rick Stansbury, and more than what ODU pays Jeff Jones. That level of investment means the conference tournament results Mccasland produces are paramount, and expected to be on par with the investment, which would mean giving us chances almost annually to win the tournament. Long story short, the weight of the conference tournament is huge for us being in CUSA, so Mccasland really needs to get his team to perform well there given how much has been invested in him. He has done well so far, and I expect his teams to be competitive in March and win one under his current contract.

Watching Penava, I feel like that is what Tikhonenko can bring us. Really going to be a welcomed addition to the guards we have and Simmons. Time to get hot. The best thing JJ did during his tenure was get his team ready for conference tourney time. 4 of JJ's last 6 seasons we made the SBC Tourney finals. As Tasty pointed out when we hired Mccasland, his contract makes it so we basically have to make the NCAA tourney to break even in basketball. Even if Mccasland's teams are consistently near the top of the conference and winning around 20 games a year, if they aren't having success in the CUSA tourney then, truthfully, we would be overpaying for Mccasland. He's getting paid the big bucks, so tourney time is when it's time for him to separate himself from the pack of other coaches we could have hired for less, and prove he is worth it.

That just sounds to me like you like football more than basketball if you weren't missing a football game when we were 1-11 but can only bring yourself to go 65-75% of basketball games when we're going down to the wire with the best teams in the conference.

They're calling everything a foul but we aren't doing ourselves any favors by not being able to stay in front of them

They're making the tough ones too. We look outmatched on that end of the court right now

Exactly. Temara has zero confidence right now and Duffy doesn't look that far behind. And Lawson is not half the offensive player against a zone that he is against man.

Second half not going great. Cmon, guys

AJ!!

Really need these free throws today, AJ

Glad to see they are turning things around at a really good time

Exactly. If that is the case, the coach is doing a real disservice to his athlete. It's really sad how many high school coaches don't know the recruiting process, and/or don't understand college football (i.e. Refer to G5 schools as Division II, which I have seen numerous times) yet are in a position where the athletes and parents usually know less and look to the coach to guide them in the process.

Depending on which free throws we make, we likely get two more because I believe we missed the front end of the one and one two or three times. So that's more like 13-18 which is an additional 6 points, matching how much we lost by. Your point definitely still stands that the turnovers were a bigger issue, especially considering how well we were shooting, but the free throws were especially detrimental when you factor in missing the front end of the one and one.

Really good to see Smart finishing on his drives. That had been his only real weakness offensively. He was shooting the same inside the arc as he was outside the arc until recently. Very good development in his game, and makes defenses respect him when he puts the ball on the floor, where the weren't previously.

Man, really needed these results on that road trip. Way to go, ladies!

Bingo. Great effort, though. We're about as far as long as we could have hoped at this stage in year one without Gibson, Tikhonenko and J Simmons. Big homestand coming up. Let's make the Pit feel like it did back when we were last this good.

Simmons missed a layup and had a bad pass resulting in a turnover. Outside of that he played really solid post defense and was good on offense too. Impressed. Need to cut out those turnovers and do a better job making guys other than Potts and King beat us. We return 5 starters next year. MTSU loses their top 3 scorers and I haven't been that impressed by their other guys today. Hopefully this game will signal a passing of the CUSA torch

Sloppy passes and Potts and King can't miss. At least we are shooting well right now

Good article. This was the case last year at Arkansas State as well. If only we could start shooting threes as well as last year's Arkansas State team did, we'd really make ourselves dangerous come tourney time.

7-4 in conference. The last two seasons we were a combined 2-16 in conference play on the road. This year alone we are 4-2 in conference play on the road.

Nope

So many of our turnovers have been unforced errors this year. Many by Lawson and Holston, including now. Really need to be cleaning that up soon.

33-21 at halftime. Was looking like that would be one of our better and more impressive halves of the year until those last 4 or 5 minutes where we were very sloppy with the ball

23-7 under 8 in the first half. Starting to capitalize on offense. Good to see Smart come alive there

Some really bad passes and outside shooting by us are the only reasons this wasn't a 20-0 start. Hope that doesn't come back to bite us