I think more what I meant by “what our program is” is the fact that some 90% of the banners hanging in the Pit got raised within the last decade.
So given that in the century before Mac got here we had three 15-seed NCAA appearances and zero NITs, imma still be pretty ok with a 20+ win season and basketball into late March/early April. That doesn’t mean that I don’t WANT more…but I’m also not going to downplay really good basketball after a whole history of at best mediocre.
Our OOC schedule (definitely a topic worth discussing) and a down AAC meant we had to be near perfect for an at-large and if we’re being honest last years team was not even near perfect.
that said, I’ll choose not to diminish some nice wins against power conference foes that a decade prior we’d have (and did) storm the court for.
In what universe, is a single digit scoring average considered elite?
i thrust Burton's recruiting, but is shooting the three at 32.5% exceptional? They played a tough OCC schedule, but the Mid-American league is definitely bottom tier.
Funny, teams usually lose to better teams. Yes, it is exciting to win over big time programs that spend, including NIL, 10 plus times what NT can.
If you were not excited about NT basketball in the McCasland and Hodge era, you are likely to be disappointed in any team,
Eric Morris is the only college coach to offer a scholarship to the quarterback who is 15 minutes away from being the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. It would be crazy for him and UNT not to use this for self-marketing.
Also, since when is "recruiting methodology" a bad thing? You can't win if you don't bring talented players in. Especially now when they go out as quickly as they came in.
I agree that football is obviously a bigger deal than basketball.
But we have no chance to beat the P4 schools in football anymore. Heck, look what happened when we played Texas Tech.
The larger rosters in football and the ability of the P4 to monopolize the biggest, strongest and fastest players is too much for our limited budget to overcome.
But in basketball: there are so many great guards that the P4 can’t take all of them. Stack a few great guards with a few serviceable big men (99% of the great big men are in the $$$ conferences) and we have a fighting chance against anyone.
The best of the SEC schools would never play us in basketball but they would invite us to their football stadium almost every week if they could.
And your point about NCAA basketball having more parity is a reason that we should invest more heavily in basketball. Why not fight a fight that you can actually win?
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