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DePaul

I keep seeing comments about how Haskins scheduled cupcakes and nobody complained. Here are the facts:
  1. 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.
  2. Fans complained about the cupcakes back then, too. Haskins was constantly defending his OOC schedules.
Texas and DePaul were good road opponents; other than NMSU there isn't an attractive home game on our OOC schedule. I get that some cupcakes are necessary to work out your rotations, test some players in real game situations, etc. But it helps to play games against tough competition, too, and it's nice to play at home against teams that fans want to see.
Whether or not Haskins scheduled this team or that team, things were different 40 years ago. Bringing up Haskins’ scheduling in 2022 is grasping at straws.

Haskins won a national championship and had pretty good teams most years. His home schedules had Utah, BYU, and other WAC schools. So he could “get away” with some cupcakes.

Todays current UTEP team doesn’t have any of that. UTEP’s team isn’t close to being in the Top 25 or making the NCAAs. BYU and Utah have been replaced with FIU and FAU. Bronze-ing’s greatest accomplishment was done at another school.

Haskins teams were worth the price of admission. The last decade of UTEPs teams are not.
 
It's nice the team got rewarded after a loss,to go site see the Windy City . 😮😮😮A nice recruiting trip for DePaul to snatch players from Utep. 😎😎😎👍👍👍
 
Whether or not Haskins scheduled this team or that team, things were different 40 years ago. Bringing up Haskins’ scheduling in 2022 is grasping at straws.

Haskins won a national championship and had pretty good teams most years. His home schedules had Utah, BYU, and other WAC schools. So he could “get away” with some cupcakes.

Todays current UTEP team doesn’t have any of that. UTEP’s team isn’t close to being in the Top 25 or making the NCAAs. BYU and Utah have been replaced with FIU and FAU. Bronze-ing’s greatest accomplishment was done at another school.

Haskins teams were worth the price of admission. The last decade of UTEPs teams are not.
Put some respect on FAU's name and their top 10 NET ranking 😆
 
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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?!
Here are my two cents on some of the issues:

1. The Miners are giving up way too many second shots; especially after good initial defense. It goes without saying how demoralizing it is for the defense, but the effort needs to be consistent; and is not. With the type of defense Golding uses, the players are often out of position for rebounding, and teams can take advantage. It happened at home, but on the road the issue is amplified. Obviously, opposing coaches will gameplan accordingly. Teams are getting wide open looks from 3, or layups as a result of second shots.

2. Without generating turnovers, the team really struggles to score. Just not enough scoring options to be consistent in the half court. Better teams can limit turnovers, and UTEP is in trouble, especially on the road. This team is not going to suddenly morph into a good shooting team, they need the turnovers to generate offense.

3. Poor freethrow shooting. UTEP is shockingly bad from the line, and this includes the guards. Giving up "free" points is a killer against any team, but can get you blown out by decent teams. Very tough to overcome, and I don't see this team getting too much better in this area; but really the only way is up from where they are currently at.
 
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Here are my two cents on some of the issues:

1. The Miners are giving up way too many second shots; especially after good initial defense. It goes without saying how demoralizing it is for the defense, but the effort needs to be consistent; and is not. With the type of defense Golding uses, the players are often out of position for rebounding, and teams can take advantage. It happened at home, but on the road the issue is amplified. Obviously, opposing coaches will gameplan accordingly. Teams are getting wide open looks from 3, or layups as a result of second shots.

2. Without generating turnovers, the team really struggles to score. Just not enough scoring options to be consistent in the half court. Better teams can limit turnovers, and UTEP is in trouble, especially on the road. This team is not going to suddenly morph into a good shooting team, they need the turnovers to generate offense.

3. Poor freethrow shooting. UTEP is shockingly bad from the line, and this includes the guards. Giving up "free" points is a killer against any team, but can get you blown out by decent teams. Very tough to overcome, and I don't see this team getting too much better in this area; but really the only way is up from where they are currently at.
The rebounding looked solid at first. Disappointing to see it dwindle away.
 
I keep seeing comments about how Haskins scheduled cupcakes and nobody complained. Here are the facts:
  1. 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.
  2. Fans complained about the cupcakes back then, too. Haskins was constantly defending his OOC schedules.
Texas and DePaul were good road opponents; other than NMSU there isn't an attractive home game on our OOC schedule. I get that some cupcakes are necessary to work out your rotations, test some players in real game situations, etc. But it helps to play games against tough competition, too, and it's nice to play at home against teams that fans want to see.
Yes, if you look at the entire decade of the '80s, you can compile quite a list. And some of those are NCAA Tournament foes, so you can't really count those as our non-conference schedule. In two seasons, Golding has played games at Texas, DePaul, and Kansas, all road games. I liked the road games at New Mexico and Pacific and those are the types of teams UTEP should always schedule a couple of home-and-homes with each season.

Many of those teams were also part of the Sun Carnival Tournament and, sadly, that tournament is no longer able to draw major teams to participate. My understanding is that it's one of the few remaining non-exempt tournaments. What I don't understand, if that's part of the problem, is why can't they just make it an exempt tournament? What's stopping them for all these years? Is there anything that can make that tournament relevant again? Maybe use more of that "car rental tax" money to prop it up?

Haskins always scheduled some tune-up games, so clearly he thought there was value in having tune-up games. Some posters here see absolutely no value in tune-up games and want to replace them all with road games at Power 6 teams. I don't think there's much to learn from body-bag games. If I were to play a chess match against Magnus Carlsen, he would wipe the floor with me, probably so thoroughly that I would have absolutely no idea why I lost. What did I learn there? There's more to learn by playing players near my level and a bit higher. But if I want to experiment with some wild openings, I'm not going to try those in a rated game against a player of my level. I'm going to save that for a match against a lower-rated player.
 
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Yes, if you look at the entire decade of the '80s, you can compile quite a list. And some of those are NCAA Tournament foes, so you can't really count those as our non-conference schedule. In two seasons, Golding has played games at Texas, DePaul, and Kansas, all road games. I liked the road games at New Mexico and Pacific and those are the types of teams UTEP should always schedule a couple of home-and-homes with each season.

Many of those teams were also part of the Sun Carnival Tournament and, sadly, that tournament is no longer able to draw major teams to participate. My understanding is that it's one of the few remaining non-exempt tournaments. What I don't understand, if that's part of the problem, is why can't they just make it an exempt tournament? What's stopping them for all these years? Is there anything that can make that tournament relevant again? Maybe use more of that "car rental tax" money to prop it up?

Haskins always scheduled some tune-up games, so clearly he thought there was value in having tune-up games. Some posters here see absolutely no value in tune-up games and want to replace them all with road games at Power 6 teams. I don't think there's much to learn from body-bag games. If I were to play a chess match against Magnus Carlsen, he would wipe the floor with me, probably so thoroughly that I would have absolutely no idea why I lost. What did I learn there? There's more to learn by playing players near my level and a bit higher. But if I want to experiment with some wild openings, I'm not going to try those in a rated game against a player of my level. I'm going to save that for a match against a lower-rated player.
Nice analogy. I play chess often against computer programs. I learn nothing when playing anything under 700. I feel like a blind dog would put up a better game. Imo a non d1 team is the equivalent of a 500 chess player. I'll take playing a chess master over a novice any day of the week.

I'm sure the players would rather test themselves vs a potential NCAA Tournament team than against the equivalent of a glorified high school team.


Last season we played 9 games against Q1 and Q2 teams and 23 games against Q3 and Q4 teams. We play plenty of teams at our level and way below us. Why not add those two invisible non d1 games to the Q1 and Q2 list? The Carlsen's of college basketball have fallen to ordinary teams similar to UTEP many times. I've heard stories we used to do that. It would be nice to see that again instead of beating NNM by 40 or in other words check mating them with 4 Queens on the board.
 
Nice analogy. I play chess often against computer programs. I learn nothing when playing anything under 700. I feel like a blind dog would put up a better game. Imo a non d1 team is the equivalent of a 500 chess player. I'll take playing a chess master over a novice any day of the week.

I'm sure the players would rather test themselves vs a potential NCAA Tournament team than against the equivalent of a glorified high school team.


Last season we played 9 games against Q1 and Q2 teams and 23 games against Q3 and Q4 teams. We play plenty of teams at our level and way below us. Why not add those two invisible non d1 games to the Q1 and Q2 list? The Carlsen's of college basketball have fallen to ordinary teams similar to UTEP many times. I've heard stories we used to do that. It would be nice to see that again instead of beating NNM by 40 or in other words check mating them with 4 Queens on the board.
I'm saying that there are different things to be learned by playing at each level. If UTEP never played Carlsens, then I would agree, but they play some Carlsens each season. Kansas was last season, Texas was this season. You cannot convince me that the REASON UTEP struggles is because they play a couple of tune-up games, when NMSU plays those exact same teams. If UTEP is bad BECAUSE they played NNMU, then the same should be true of NMSU.
 
Yes, if you look at the entire decade of the '80s, you can compile quite a list. And some of those are NCAA Tournament foes, so you can't really count those as our non-conference schedule. In two seasons, Golding has played games at Texas, DePaul, and Kansas, all road games. I liked the road games at New Mexico and Pacific and those are the types of teams UTEP should always schedule a couple of home-and-homes with each season.
Actually all of the teams I mentioned were on the early season OOC schedule for part of the 80s (I didn't go looking at the whole decade). While we did play Arizona in the NCAA Tournament in '87, that's not the game I was referring to, as we also played at least one regular season game against them in the decade. Also, some of the teams (Indiana, Georgetown, ASU, possibly more) we played more than once in the 80s.

Many of those teams were also part of the Sun Carnival Tournament and, sadly, that tournament is no longer able to draw major teams to participate. My understanding is that it's one of the few remaining non-exempt tournaments. What I don't understand, if that's part of the problem, is why can't they just make it an exempt tournament? What's stopping them for all these years? Is there anything that can make that tournament relevant again? Maybe use more of that "car rental tax" money to prop it up?
Yes, some of the teams mentioned did play in the Sun Carnival Tournament, which, as you know, used to be a top notch holiday tournament. I don't know the rules behind exempt tournaments, but yeah, it would be nice if our tournament could return to its former glory. I do think that the tournament field had an effect on Haskins' scheduling, knowing that he had two premier games coming around Christmas. Still, in '85 he scheduled Washington and Georgetown, knowing full well that that Nebraska, Alabama, and Ohio State were in the Sun Carnival field.

I do agree that we need to schedule more MWC, WCC, and AAC type teams. We should be able to get some home and homes with those teams, rather than playing a road game only or agreeing to a two-for-one arrangement, like the P5s demand.
 
I would like UTEP to schedule SMU and TCU every year. That way there would be always be a game in the Metroplex, and both are challenging but winnable games. Right now the schedule has 20 conference games. Teams are allowed to play 30 games by NCAA rule. This leaves only 10 OOC games. Three from the Jim Forbes tournament and two from the Sun Carnival and UTEP is left with just 5 OOC games, and NMSU would be two of them. That leaves UTEP with just 3 OOC games to actually schedule. I don't believe the NNM game counts toward the 30 since they are a D3 team. That could also be true for Sul Ross. I think the rule is that only one of them can be exempt. So with only 3 open dates UTEP scheduled: Texas, Depaul and one of the D3. What is left for UTEP to do? Get rid of either the Forbes or Sun Carnival tournament? Not going to happen. UTEP doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to scheduling. Would it have been better to schedule a D1 instead of one of the D3s? Yes, but maybe nobody was willing to come here to play. The Sun or Forbes tournament need to get the exemption from the NCAA so that UTEP's scheduling opens up.
 
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I would like UTEP to schedule SMU and TCU every year. That way there would be always be a game in the Metroplex, and both are challenging but winnable games. Right now the schedule has 20 conference games. Teams are allowed to play 30 games by NCAA rule. This leaves only 10 OOC games. Three from the Jim Forbes tournament and two from the Sun Carnival and UTEP is left with just 5 OOC games, and NMSU would be two of them. That leaves UTEP with just 3 OOC games to actually schedule. I don't believe the NNM game counts toward the 30 since they are a D3 team. That could also be true for Sul Ross. I think the rule is that only one of them can be exempt. So with only 3 open dates UTEP scheduled: Texas, Depaul and one of the D3. What is left for UTEP to do? Get rid of either the Forbes or Sun Carnival tournament? Not going to happen. UTEP doesn't have a lot of options when it comes to scheduling. Would it have been better to schedule a D1 instead of one of the D3s? Yes, but maybe nobody was willing to come here to play. The Sun or Forbes tournament need to get the exemption from the NCAA so that UTEP's scheduling opens up.
What would us fans do without the great Jim Forbes Classic??? The Sun Carnival is on its last legs as they got NMSU in this year’s field.

Next year, the Miners will only have 16 conference games and the 2 NMSU games will be included in that. So that’s 6 games extra they have to fill.
 
What would us fans do without the great Jim Forbes Classic??? The Sun Carnival is on its last legs as they got NMSU in this year’s field.

Next year, the Miners will only have 16 conference games and the 2 NMSU games will be included in that. So that’s 6 games extra they have to fill.
Senter currently googling "how many none d1 colleges in NM have a basketball team?"
 
What would us fans do without the great Jim Forbes Classic??? The Sun Carnival is on its last legs as they got NMSU in this year’s field.

Next year, the Miners will only have 16 conference games and the 2 NMSU games will be included in that. So that’s 6 games extra they have to fill.
I agree that the schedule needs to change/improve. I would like for UTEP to have SMU, TCU, UNM and either UofA or Arizona State all be on the schedule. Three of those on the road and the others at home and flip them the following year. You could add TTU or Baylor to the list and then the schedule would be great. These games/locations would not have high travel cost either.
 
Miners are a .500 team at best. We are 300+ in FG attempts, 3-pt shooting, rebounding and free throws. Our defense is no where near it needs to be to compete with good teams.

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I agree that the schedule needs to change/improve. I would like for UTEP to have SMU, TCU, UNM and either UofA or Arizona State all be on the schedule. Three of those on the road and the others at home and flip them the following year. You could add TTU or Baylor to the list and then the schedule would be great. These games/locations would not have high travel cost either.

Again, goes back to the mentality that UTEP has. Better to schedule Sul Ross or Alcorn than go play on the road. ASU and UofA aren’t “afraid” of UTEP. A loss to UTEP doesn’t hurt them in anyway.
 
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I’ve always felt like the UT System should help out little brother with OOC games, and they have to an extent.
 
Again, goes back to the mentality that UTEP has. Better to schedule Sul Ross or Alcorn than go play on the road. ASU and UofA aren’t “afraid” of UTEP. A loss to UTEP doesn’t hurt them in anyway.
Road loss at a decent team won't hurt us either it would actually help us. RICE climbed up 26 points in the NET with their close game to Texas. We can beat NNM by 100 and nothing happens.
 
I’ve always felt like the UT System should help out little brother with OOC games, and they have to an extent.
Yeah, but only UT is our true superior. UTSA, UTA, and UTRGV are not. We could schedule those teams if we wanted and we have. Tyler, UTPB, and Dallas are non-D1. At best they would replace Sul Ross and NNMU games.
 
Yeah, but only UT is our true superior. UTSA, UTA, and UTRGV are not. We could schedule those teams if we wanted and we have. Tyler, UTPB, and Dallas are non-D1. At best they would replace Sul Ross and NNMU games.
UTA, UTD and soon SFA are decent OOC basketball games.
 
UTA and SFA yes. We should play them, but I don’t think we really need UT’s help to do it though
I’d be for a home and away every year with those two, plus at UT every year with them coming here once or twice a decade. That might take the System’s help.
 
The ACC and the Big Ten have a challenge every year where several teams from one conference will play a team from the other. CUSA should try to get up a challenge with another conference. How about the AAC, since several of our former conference schools will be or have moved over to them? Something to work up some excitement and a chance to add some variety to the schedule.
 
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As of right now we've played one Q1 game (@Texas) and one Q2 (@NMSU). We have 4 games vs Q1 and 5 vs Q2 in conference. We still have a potential Q1 game at home if Kent St and UTEP meet up.

DePaul and NMSU can move up a few spots and turn into Q1 and Q2 games. Then of course a couple of conference teams could fall from Q1/Q2 category also.

Something I found interesting is that we have 9 games in conference against q1/q2 teams. Compare that to UH from the AAC and they have 5 q1/q2 games and only one of them is a q1 game. The difference is they loaded up their OOC with 4 q1 and 2 q2 games to make up the difference.

I think next year's AAC will finish ranked behind CUSA by the computers.
 
I don’t think Senter has ever posted anything about disappointment with football or basketball results. He just goes and hides until the next win over a garbage school. The DePaul AD seems to “care” a little bit.
Why would he, everything is rosy at UTEP. Over the last 3 years football is 15-17. If we had won one more game we would be at that perfect 50-50 balance we aim for! Basketball is overarching. In the same time frame, we are 3 games over .500 vs d1 teams! Almost perfect there too.
 
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