Crown vs NIT

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T16:34:35Z

3 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

On 11/1/24???
Those expectations were way too high (unfair), or you're lying.

Why should my expectations be any lower? Every team is dealing with the portal and loses players to graduation. Other than Memphis, our schedule did not have a single team with top to bottom better talent than us. I'm not saying that in hindsight. I looked at what we had coming in and felt very good about the transfers. Lorient was the only surprise and Newell didn't meet my expectations so I guess that's a wash.

We had a weak schedule and underachieved. It is what it is.

MCMLXXX · 2025-03-17T16:36:18Z

17 minutes ago, GMGGWBG said:

With nil and the transfer portal, it is going to be harder and harder to get teams to be willing to play in the post season at all. Why would a player that can make millions next season risk getting hurt to play in the NIT.

Does anyone play for the love of the game anymore? My youngest brother had his nose broken in a pick-up game in his Church Gym with nothing at stake. After recovery he went right back to playing in the pick-up games. I know he did not make a career out of basketball but still most of us started playing for the enjoyment including the fellowship with others.

Matt from A700 · 2025-03-17T17:02:40Z

59 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

And what were those expectations on 11/1/24? ...after coming off of a 19-15 year and losing your top 6 players from that team to transfer/graduation? HONESTLY, what were your expectations?

The expectation is always to get better. With the transfer portal that is still reasonable for mid majors like us. Yes, those expectations may change during the season should there be injuries. I think if we had a totally new coaching staff, I wouldn't be as frustrated but with Ross being a continuation of Grant, it feels like lack of growth.

GMGGWBG · 2025-03-17T17:09:36Z

33 minutes ago, MCMLXXX said:

Does anyone play for the love of the game anymore? My youngest brother had his nose broken in a pick-up game in his Church Gym with nothing at stake. After recovery he went right back to playing in the pick-up games. I know he did not make a career out of basketball but still most of us started playing for the enjoyment including the fellowship with others.

Robert Allen got popped in the mouth and had to have stitches. He wanted to stay in the game.

We either need to transfer in overlooked players and offer exposure so they can transfer to the p5 or bring in seniors so they can play their butts off knowing every game could be their last.

Which would you prefer? I'm with you on this topic and I think it will take time to adjust to this new reality.

When it comes to enjoying the game and playing together, this years team is a great example.

Edited yesterday at 05:11 PM by GMGGWBG

MeanGreenTexan · 2025-03-17T17:16:56Z

35 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

Why should my expectations be any lower? Every team is dealing with the portal and loses players to graduation. Other than Memphis, our schedule did not have a single team with top to bottom better talent than us. I'm not saying that in hindsight. I looked at what we had coming in and felt very good about the transfers. Lorient was the only surprise and Newell didn't meet my expectations so I guess that's a wash.

We had a weak schedule and underachieved. It is what it is.

Was not prepared for the delusional option.

There is no way a sane person saw the departure of our top 6 options and EXPECTED to finish better than 2nd in the AAC and a 24-8 (so far) record. No way.

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T17:18:27Z

12 minutes ago, Matt from A700 said:

The expectation is always to get better. With the transfer portal that is still reasonable for mid majors like us. Yes, those expectations may change during the season should there be injuries. I think if we had a totally new coaching staff, I wouldn't be as frustrated but with Ross being a continuation of Grant, it feels like lack of growth.

I may be off a bit but Utah State lost their number 1, 3 and 5 leading scorers and more to the portal and lost their HC to Washington (leading scorer followed him there). They still went 26-7 and made the NCAA tourney with a new head coach.

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T17:20:28Z

1 minute ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

Was not prepared for the delusional option.

There is no way a sane person saw the departure of our top 6 options and EXPECTED to finish better than 2nd in the AAC and a 24-8 (so far) record. No way.

You're right. I really expected to lose to UTSA, Temple without their leading scorer, and UAB with an injured star player coming off 40 minutes the night before. Record is meaningless if it's against a weak schedule.

NorthTexasWeLove · 2025-03-17T17:44:14Z

At the mid-major level, my annual baseline expectations for North Texas Basketball is to win 20 games and finish in the top 1/4 of league play. As a season progresses, my expectations can only increase. They will never sway away from. 20 wins and top 1/4 in league play.

MeanGreenTexan · 2025-03-17T17:51:07Z

15 minutes ago, Matt from A700 said:

The expectation is always to get better. With the transfer portal that is still reasonable for mid majors like us. Yes, those expectations may change during the season should there be injuries. I think if we had a totally new coaching staff, I wouldn't be as frustrated but with Ross being a continuation of Grant, it feels like lack of growth.

There is a ceiling ('76 Indiana), so you can't always get better, and yeah, I think the portal can certainly help UNT (obviously).
But when you're looking at losing 75% of your minutes from the previous year, including your top 6 players, it's tough to heap expectations over & above what the new guys + Moulaye, Dello, & Stone achieved this year.

That is a ton of minutes to replace, and in order to believe you'll do better than last year, you have to expect to hit 100% on those portal guys being better than Aaron Scott, Rubin Jones, Jason Edwards, CJ Noland, Robert Allen, & John Buggs. That's an incredibly tough (nearly impossible) ask, IMO. Yet, here we are! We did better than last year! How anyone can't see this year's team as a monumental success is beyond me.

MeanGreenTexan · 2025-03-17T18:06:35Z

31 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

You're right. I really expected to lose to UTSA, Temple without their leading scorer, and UAB with an injured star player coming off 40 minutes the night before. Record is meaningless if it's against a weak schedule.

You know we lost to a crappy UTSA team the year Javion took us to the 2nd round of the tourney, right? Logical thought process means nothing when NT lines up against UTSA in any sport.

Temple is a good team, with or without Mashburn Jr. Losing to them isn't terrible.

Obviously Yaxel was not hurting too bad. He basically killed us single-handedly. Heckuva player. Hats off to him & UAB. Maybe, just maybe, we'll get a repeat of 2023's NIT final when NT exacted revenge on UAB's conference title game win over us just 2 weeks prior.

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T18:44:50Z

35 minutes ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

You know we lost to a crappy UTSA team the year Javion took us to the 2nd round of the tourney, right? Logical thought process means nothing when NT lines up against UTSA in any sport.

Temple is a good team, with or without Mashburn Jr. Losing to them isn't terrible.

Obviously Yaxel was not hurting too bad. He basically killed us single-handedly. Heckuva player. Hats off to him & UAB. Maybe, just maybe, we'll get a repeat of 2023's NIT final when NT exacted revenge on UAB's conference title game win over us just 2 weeks prior.

So is our hope to be where we were 2 years ago or to make progress on a yearly basis? We promoted Hodge to keep the same upward momentum, not to stay stagnant. Had 2023 not happened, my expectations would be different. Were we anytime around the Benford era, my expectations would be different. We've been fairly successful for 8 seasons now. It's time for a breakthrough.

MeanGreenTexan · 2025-03-17T19:11:53Z

14 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

So is our hope to be where we were 2 years ago or to make progress on a yearly basis? We promoted Hodge to keep the same upward momentum, not to stay stagnant. Had 2023 not happened, my expectations would be different. Were we anytime around the Benford era, my expectations would be different. We've been fairly successful for 8 seasons now. It's time for a breakthrough.

Again, I still have to base it all on where we were just 6 months ago. The facts are that we replaced so much. We didn't simply replace 1 or 2 starters, and some depth. It was 4 of the 5, as well as our top 2 bench threats.

It doesn't really matter what you've accomplished the previous 6 years when your turn over that much. I was hopeful that Atin, Brenen, Lattrell, Jasper, Jonathan, & Grant could all come in and contribute at a high level, but to expect all of them to come in and perform as they did, may be asking too much.
We did progress year-over-year from last year to this year, to the tune of 5 more wins (so far)!

Improvement is not always a straight line upward. You're going to have hiccups and slips along the way (like last year). So to be where we are today, knowing everything we've gone through since Tylor hit that dagger in Jelly's face 2 years ago, yes, I'd say we're still making progress.
This year's team should show guys like Brenen (who we need to throw the kitchen sink at in order to keep) that Coach Hodge can go to the portal and grab guys who will immediately gel and win. Prior to this season, that was an unknown.

MeanGreenTexan · 2025-03-17T19:18:37Z

To get back on track here with the thread topic... Do we know if the Crown tournament required a buy-in? Where is that purse coming from? Maybe that wasn't in the cards for us.
It seems most of the teams that are in it are Power 6 teams with deep pockets, not necessarily better basketball teams than the ones in the NIT.
Plus, it's going to be nice having 2 more home games (possibly 3 if SMU drops one before the quarters).

MCMLXXX · 2025-03-17T20:09:48Z

List of Teams that declined Crown Tournament'

Declined Bids

Indiana^[3]

2025 College Basketball Crown - Wikipedia

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T20:44:31Z

1 hour ago, MeanGreenTexan said:

To get back on track here with the thread topic... Do we know if the Crown tournament required a buy-in? Where is that purse coming from? Maybe that wasn't in the cards for us.
It seems most of the teams that are in it are Power 6 teams with deep pockets, not necessarily better basketball teams than the ones in the NIT.
Plus, it's going to be nice having 2 more home games (possibly 3 if SMU drops one before the quarters).

No buy-in that I've seen. The priority is schools from conferences with Fox TV deals as Fox put together the tourney. Basically they want their product on TV as much as possible and will pay for it. Most of the schools who received bid invites are from those P6 conferences with Fox TV deals being the Big 10, Big 12, and Big East.

GMGGWBG · 2025-03-17T20:46:29Z

3 hours ago, GMG_Dallas said:

You're right. I really expected to lose to UTSA, Temple without their leading scorer, and UAB with an injured star player coming off 40 minutes the night before. Record is meaningless if it's against a weak schedule.

At the game, my wife said yaxel was hurt, but when I looked at him he looked fine and running full speed. And the Temple game was meaningless either way.

The utsa game was a terrible loss that could have changed the outcome of our season dramatically. Losing to uab is nothing to be ashamed of but still disappointing.

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T20:47:26Z

I also noticed 3 future PAC schools in Boise State, Washington State, and Oregon State. Wonder if the new PAC will have a Fox TV deal. Certainly an opportunity for them to showcase their new conference.

GMG_Dallas · 2025-03-17T20:59:49Z

10 minutes ago, GMGGWBG said:

At the game, my wife said yaxel was hurt, but when I looked at him he looked fine and running full speed. And the Temple game was meaningless either way.

The utsa game was a terrible loss that could have changed the outcome of our season dramatically. Losing to uab is nothing to be ashamed of but still disappointing.

On the broadcast, they panned over to him several times while on the bench. Sock and shoe were off and he was receiving treatment. Temple game was not meaningless. Losing to UAB once is fine. Twice can't happen when you're trying to make the NCAA tournament. Prior to the UTSA loss, our NET was 45. For comparison, Memphis is currently at 49. Only two schools in the 40s who didn't make the tournament are 44 Boise State and 46 SMU. We had a chance and blew it. None of those losses were meaningless.

GMGGWBG · 2025-03-17T21:03:49Z

2 minutes ago, GMG_Dallas said:

On the broadcast, they panned over to him several times while on the bench. Sock and shoe were off and he was receiving treatment. Temple game was not meaningless. Losing to UAB once is fine. Twice can't happen when you're trying to make the NCAA tournament. Prior to the UTSA loss, our NET was 45. For comparison, Memphis is currently at 49. Only two schools in the 40s who didn't make the tournament are 44 Boise State and 46 SMU. We had a chance and blew it. None of those losses were meaningless.

Beating Temple wouldn't have given us an at large bid.

I agree with the rest. Utsa loss killed out chances

GMGGWBG · 2025-03-17T21:07:18Z

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NorthTexasWeLove · 2025-03-17T22:35:38Z

1 hour ago, GMGGWBG said:

I just can't see a path for people to be doing this annually for every sport the next decade... and the AAC wants us to spend 10M? Jared better hire DOGE to come clean up.

BleedingGreen · 2025-03-17T22:47:07Z

Too close to call given Tulane got invited. In other words, it makes me less envious of Crown given Tulane is in . If UAB was going to the Crown instead of NIT, then I would have been a little jealous.

Andrew · 2025-03-17T23:26:24Z

Absolutely hate that there is another post tournament….. however….. This is the only way I am ok with the NIL being paid out. Winning games and then for players only based on season and post season individual awards. This should be how all college sports are done when it comes to the NIL.

NT80 · 2025-03-17T23:49:20Z

8 hours ago, GMG_Dallas said:

No clue about who sends invites first. All I know is conferences with Fox TV contracts get priority for Crown invites as the games are to be televised on Fox.

The Crown, as a strategy, wanted "Brands" for their tournament. They said that would get more TV views and more traveling fan bases to the games. Notice the logos-only on the bracket, no school names.

Also notice the PAC2 both present in this tournament. With them adding Gonzaga, Boise, St. Marys, etc this will be a nice basketball conference with National media. We should pursue interest....