The team is just not athletic enough. It all starts with recruiting. It's not about the X's and O's, its about the Johnny's and Joe's. Barbee's last year and the first two of Floyd were the last times, UTEP had the quality of athletes to compete for a CUSA title. There might have been enough Talent Terry's first year but Terry wasn't able to get the most out of his players. It is just so sad to watch UTEP basketball now.
DePaul
- Thread starter unihorn
- Start date
Agree. And when you think it can only get better, it doesn’t.
I blame the scheduling. Play more road games and less home games against non d1 teams and maybe we only lose by 10.
I went to the home opener and have skipped the rest. I just hit the point where I can’t get excited to drive across town to watch us play these non D1 schools.
We've played two road games against Power 6 teams and a third against our rival.
Our three games during the MTE were all close games, two of them going into OT. That tells me that they were just the right level of competition for where we are right now.
Can’t speak for jcorona, but my guess is he’s talking more about the Sul Ross’ and NNMUs of the schedule. Maybe I’m wrong.
NMSU is playing NNMU on the 18th. Billy G's Tourney team played Sul Ross St.
How did we prepare for a road Big East game? Don't you think two extra road games between last night and Texas would have served us better than two easy wins at home?
Are you suggesting we should because they are?
Like corona asked, did that help us prepare for DePaul in any way? I think in reality it creates a false sense of where the team is, playing teams like that. Aside from the very first scrimmage of the year maybe. Just my take though.
I like that term false sense. Those kinds of games and wins seem to create a false sense for the entire athletic department. That's a topic for another thread.
In today's age the fanbase of a program reaches much wider than the city itself. No one wants to watch them play Northern New Mexico. It doesn't help the team either. I don't understand why we don't hit the road, make some money, play on tv, and take an L or who knows maybe even pull one out. Yeah 6-2 looks pretty but I'll take 4-4 the same.
I will say the ALCN, CSUB, and AMCC games exceeded my expectations.
But there’s no getting around our two ugly losses vs. aggroid and DePaul.
This is a scoring challenged team that has to figure out how to win ugly. Make it happen, Coach.
Yup. My homer call for 20 wins is looking like, well, a homer call. There are times when I think we've the talent for 20 wins and a run for top-4 placing in conference and there are times when I think we could get shut out in conference. Jekyll and Hyde type team it seems.
Those games were close, competitive, and “exciting” games. So if a person knows nothing about either team, they would find them entertaining.
But Alcorn, Bakersfield, and A&MCC are bad teams that shouldn’t be hanging with UTEP.
20 wins doesn’t mean anything, it’s not an accomplishment anymore. They already have 6 and will likely get a 7th vs NC A&T. That means they only have to win 13 more out of the 20 other games.
I don't think those games had anything at all to do with UTEP's woes against DePaul. I don't think anybody had a false sense of anything after three nail-biters during the MTE.
Those two games may not have had anything directly related to UTEP’s woes against DePaul, but nor can you say they helped in preparing for a Big East team on the road either. At all. Honest request. Please help me understand how they helped anything other than to pad the W column.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the bolded statement.
Tune-up games allow you to try out different things, especially when all but 3 of the players on the roster are new. Haskins scheduled these games. As long as I can remember, UTEP has always scheduled these games. NMSU schedules these games and they're the team folks around here are always asking why UTEP can't be like.
Back then when Haskins scheduled them no one complained cuz we had a tough conference schedule and attractive home games fans cared about.
Times are different now and since we won't find that many good or attractive games during conference then we should schedule as tough as we can ooc.
Times are different now and since we won't find that many good or attractive games during conference then we should schedule as tough as we can ooc.
Shouldn't Haskins have scheduled as tough as he could OOC so that he could prepare the team for the tough conference schedule? I mean, the logic seems to be that scheduling a non-conference gauntlet with never a cupcake at all is the best way to prepare the team for the conference schedule. Why let Haskins off the hook for all his cupcakes?
That’s the thing. I’m not sure we can win 13 of those 20 anymore. Not after the blowout losses to NMSU and DePaul.
I wasn't around for much of the Haskins era. It seems fans were happy with the quality of home games in the schedule. If you're a season ticket holder and have no problems with the home schedule then this debate is settled.
If you read my original post about scheduling I say maybe we only lose by 10. I don't think having a tougher schedule automatically makes the team better but it is nice for the customer I mean fans.
Power 6 teams don't like to play road games at mid-majors. Stamping your feet about it isn't going to change that.
That's exactly why I'm asking for two road games in substitute of two non d1 home games. H&A with another similar conference or at a P6 if possible.
I don't know why you're in favor of two games that don't even exist in the official NET rankings and NCAAT resume.
UTEP has fallen to 208 in KenPom. CUSA teams we’re ranked above:
Rice 230
FIU 248
UTSA 322
Rice 230
FIU 248
UTSA 322
Yeah, that is perplexing. Not sure why he’d favor that either. To each their own.
I already made a post giving the rationale for tune-up games. Try reading it.
Actually, playing and beating the bottom teams in the NET rankings would cause our NET rankings to go down, so from that perspective, it's better to play tune-up games against Division 2-3 teams than against terrible D1 teams, since they don't harm our NET rankings.
I did. I think your rationale is flawed and weak…since you want to go there.
If you did, then you shouldn't have posted that you weren't sure why I'd favor it. If you think my rationale is flawed and weak, that's fine, but that's different from your earlier post that seemed to imply I had given no rationale at all.
Yeah I don't want to play terrible d1 teams either. We usually already have enough of those on the schedule. Last season more than half of our schedule was against q4 teams.
BTW losing on the road to Q1 or Q2 teams doesn't harm our NET ranking either or if it does its minimal and an upset win here and there would greatly increase it. A win over a d2 team doesn't count.
Net Rankings? Non Power conference teams are left out of the NCAA Tournament because they don’t have enough good wins versus top competition. They are not left out because they played non-D1 teams instead of SWAC teams.
In 2020-21, Belmont went 26-4 and didn’t make the NCAAs. They didn’t play anyone outside of their conference. They didn’t make it because they scheduled Alcorn St instead of Sul Ross.
Hypothetically, UTEP isn’t making the NCAAs because they went 0-2 vs Texas and DePaul. Scheduling Sul Ross and NNMU instead of 2 SWAC teams does absolutely nothing. Yes, their NET rankings will be slightly better, but they would be kept out of the NCAAs because they didn’t beat anyone.
If you don’t play them, you can’t beat them.
In 2020-21, Belmont went 26-4 and didn’t make the NCAAs. They didn’t play anyone outside of their conference. They didn’t make it because they scheduled Alcorn St instead of Sul Ross.
Hypothetically, UTEP isn’t making the NCAAs because they went 0-2 vs Texas and DePaul. Scheduling Sul Ross and NNMU instead of 2 SWAC teams does absolutely nothing. Yes, their NET rankings will be slightly better, but they would be kept out of the NCAAs because they didn’t beat anyone.
If you don’t play them, you can’t beat them.
Ok. I’ll be more precise. From reading many of your posts over time, I consider you a pretty logical and pragmatic guy. Therefore, I’m not sure why you’d buy into the rationale you provided. Better?
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Back in the day there wasn’t all of these Algorithms selecting teams. It was literally Commissioners fighting for their leagues.
You could win 20 games and get an at-large and you can fight for that over the 8th place Big 10 team.
Now it’s rare for a league like ours to get an at-large because there is so much data involved.
So 20 wins isn’t an accomplishment at all, just means you scheduled 20 wins.
Nowins is right, don’t get fixated on 20. All that matters is Conference Play.
2012 when Memphis and USM got in.
Again, that is irrelevant. If UTEP played a “tougher schedule”, they be “better prepared” to win more games and be considered for the NIT.
Look at our personal lives. Some of us “got better” because we challenged ourselves. You don’t get better by not challenging yourself. If you play Sudoku and master the easy puzzles, you move on to the medium difficulty. You probably wouldn’t enter a Sudoku championship if you only played easy puzzles. If you did, you wouldn’t get very far and if you wanted to play next year, would playing more easy puzzles help you?
Same goes for poker, video games, driving, cooking, and everything.
UTEP gains nothing by playing Sul Ross and NMMU. Bronze-ing didn’t even play the bottom of his bench much. UTEP would have been better off getting slaughtered by Kentucky or Michigan.
Besides, the NET ranking isn’t the end all be all. The selection committee just doesn’t go up and down the rankings and select the teams with the best number.
The 2 non-D1 teams we played this year, weren’t even D2. One was D3, which is non- scholarship. The other was a really bad NAIA school. Which is somewhat comparable to D2.
I keep seeing comments about how Haskins scheduled cupcakes and nobody complained. Here are the facts:
- Haskins did schedule cupcakes, but he also played tough teams OOC. Here are some that he played from 80s, some of them multiple times: Indiana, Arizona State, Michigan, Arizona, Wake Forest, Purdue, Washington, Georgetown, Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon State, Texas, Auburn, Boston College, Maryland. These are in addition to the two annual games against NMSU.
- Fans complained about the cupcakes back then, too. Haskins was constantly defending his OOC schedules.
Couldn’t watch Saturdays game due to commitments but if UTEP pulled out a win fans would be complaining about DePaul’s lack luster Big East performance and so on.
My question is Golding’s team got thumped by Aggies and DePaul after a promising start. WTF happened?!
The team has athletic guys that can drive to the basket and that is the best way for the offense to score. Because we don't have outside shooters, it is easy to take away drive lanes. I missed the DePaul game but I assume that is what happened... depaul adjusted and took away those lanes. Seems like that's what NMSU did. And NMSU caught fire from beyond the arc.
Our perimeter defense looked good the first few games, limiting open 3s. Unfortunately the intensity isn't consistent and UTEP let's those 3s rain in the 2nd halves of games. Hopefully it is just a conditioning issue but I'm not sure.
