I put this on the Alley board a couple of days ago and a few thought it would be good to repost here. Not everyone will agree but this is why this is a message board !
"The season started with optimism with a new coach and a returning NCAA team. Those optimistic folks may have forgotten over the summer that the NCAA berth was a result of some unlikely events for that season only.....A weakened C-USA without Memphis and Tulsa getting hot in the tournament while avoiding hometown UTEP and physical Southern Miss.
However with about everyone returning except Evans, hopes were high and an ambitious schedule planned. In the AAC an automatic bid was almost out of the question when National Champion UCONN was awarded the tournament bid. Good OOC wins and no terrible losses were going to be necessary.
The first game sent 2000 TU fans home from South Lewis jolted with a loss at ORU. Was the at-large bid already gone? Maybe it was. A Win against Auburn (a terrible shooting team then) gave brief hope for 48 hours until destroyed by a decent OSU team. An expected WSU loss followed but a surprising win over what looked like a great Creighton team at the time, revived the hope.
Then on Dec 10 the bottom fell out with a loss to Division 2 SEOSU. We did NOT press the poor ballhandlers until very late in the game when down 13. Also did not guard the only offense they had....3 point shooters... This would prove to be the elephant in the bracketologists room. Only later did we find out the terrible tragedy that hit Coach Haith's sister earlier that week and he could not have prepared for SEOSU.
Then suddenly, and shocking all of the AAC, TU started conference play with a 10-0 run and held on for second place in the AAC, quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately TU could never win a game against SMU or Cincy, another mention by the bracketologists. Hometown UCONN did us in as expected in the AAC tournament, though it took a meltdown by TU for that to happen.
TU found itself in the "next 4 out" list and got a # 2 NIT seed. A sluggish win over William and Mary was followed by a thrashing from Murray State which clearly deserved an NCAA bid.
My coaching assessment for the year is mixed. Coach Haith kept the kids playing hard for 34 games and they never quit. I felt he made mostly good substitutions with my only concern maybe being the fact Curtis got more minutes than Ray. Mixing up defenses was really good and the zone literally beat some teams who couldn't shoot from outside. He seems to have good bench decorum, but maybe needs to know he can't berate Edsall or Steed as they will retaliate.
If there is a fault I saw with Haith's coaching it was in two areas. (1) Not enough set plays to get our only shooter (Juice) open shots. I felt sorry for Juice having to create his shot every time. (2) Not covering obvious three point shooters. This last one cost us at least 5 of the 11 games we lost. Every player we have would leave a good three point shooter for help defense and not recover in time. It happened over and over and over. We were 9th in the conference in 3 point FG defense.
As far as the team.. Haith acknowledges we are a poor shooting team. Why would Wojcik and Manning not recruit any shooters ????? They are not nearly as hard to recruit as good bigs.
We shot 41.6% from the field and 32.1% from the three which was 267th in the nation. Murray State who doesn't have nearly the recruiting ability of Tulsa has some shooters...39.2%... from the three
Free throws which probably cost us 3 of the 11 losses, ended up at 64.9% ,311th in the nation. Our 2000 team shot 70.5%.
I thought rebounding was surprisingly excellent for our smaller team. The guards really contribute. We were 62th in the nation in rebounding and were 72nd in Turnover margin.....a huge improvement from the Wojcik years where we were nearly last in the nation in turnover margin.
Woodard shot a nice 37% from the three and probably would have topped 40 if he had some open shots. Ray had a nice 35.7 % but everyone else was sub 30% ........Murray State had four players around the 40% mark and Dante Swanson used to tease us with high 40's.
Where do we go from here? Rep is leaving as I suspect will a couple more. I don't know the academic side of things but that could be a problem too. Not sure about Littlejohn or Dew. Dew shot 20.8% from the field....not what I had hoped for but was a good rebounder in his short time on the court. Littlejohn confused us all by burning his redshirt and then playing six minutes total.
Birt and Taplin give us some hope, but to compete with SMU, Cincy, and UCONN, we have to have some scoring beef inside. We really need an inside power like Auburn ...but so do 25 other teams ahead of us.
Haith's recruiting in this spring and particularly next November will determine the fate of TU basketball for several years. We are going to find out soon if these are going to be Nolan/Tubby/Self
glory years of TU basketball or Barnett, Phillips, and Wojcik years.
In closing I must say I have not seen a team compete harder for an entire season, never once giving up and giving the fans an overachievement in our first year of the AAC. The AAC now knows Tulsa is in this to win it. Thanks to all the Coaches and Players for an enjoyable ride.
This post was edited on 3/25 9:11 AM by I.I.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
"The season started with optimism with a new coach and a returning NCAA team. Those optimistic folks may have forgotten over the summer that the NCAA berth was a result of some unlikely events for that season only.....A weakened C-USA without Memphis and Tulsa getting hot in the tournament while avoiding hometown UTEP and physical Southern Miss.
However with about everyone returning except Evans, hopes were high and an ambitious schedule planned. In the AAC an automatic bid was almost out of the question when National Champion UCONN was awarded the tournament bid. Good OOC wins and no terrible losses were going to be necessary.
The first game sent 2000 TU fans home from South Lewis jolted with a loss at ORU. Was the at-large bid already gone? Maybe it was. A Win against Auburn (a terrible shooting team then) gave brief hope for 48 hours until destroyed by a decent OSU team. An expected WSU loss followed but a surprising win over what looked like a great Creighton team at the time, revived the hope.
Then on Dec 10 the bottom fell out with a loss to Division 2 SEOSU. We did NOT press the poor ballhandlers until very late in the game when down 13. Also did not guard the only offense they had....3 point shooters... This would prove to be the elephant in the bracketologists room. Only later did we find out the terrible tragedy that hit Coach Haith's sister earlier that week and he could not have prepared for SEOSU.
Then suddenly, and shocking all of the AAC, TU started conference play with a 10-0 run and held on for second place in the AAC, quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately TU could never win a game against SMU or Cincy, another mention by the bracketologists. Hometown UCONN did us in as expected in the AAC tournament, though it took a meltdown by TU for that to happen.
TU found itself in the "next 4 out" list and got a # 2 NIT seed. A sluggish win over William and Mary was followed by a thrashing from Murray State which clearly deserved an NCAA bid.
My coaching assessment for the year is mixed. Coach Haith kept the kids playing hard for 34 games and they never quit. I felt he made mostly good substitutions with my only concern maybe being the fact Curtis got more minutes than Ray. Mixing up defenses was really good and the zone literally beat some teams who couldn't shoot from outside. He seems to have good bench decorum, but maybe needs to know he can't berate Edsall or Steed as they will retaliate.
If there is a fault I saw with Haith's coaching it was in two areas. (1) Not enough set plays to get our only shooter (Juice) open shots. I felt sorry for Juice having to create his shot every time. (2) Not covering obvious three point shooters. This last one cost us at least 5 of the 11 games we lost. Every player we have would leave a good three point shooter for help defense and not recover in time. It happened over and over and over. We were 9th in the conference in 3 point FG defense.
As far as the team.. Haith acknowledges we are a poor shooting team. Why would Wojcik and Manning not recruit any shooters ????? They are not nearly as hard to recruit as good bigs.
We shot 41.6% from the field and 32.1% from the three which was 267th in the nation. Murray State who doesn't have nearly the recruiting ability of Tulsa has some shooters...39.2%... from the three
Free throws which probably cost us 3 of the 11 losses, ended up at 64.9% ,311th in the nation. Our 2000 team shot 70.5%.
I thought rebounding was surprisingly excellent for our smaller team. The guards really contribute. We were 62th in the nation in rebounding and were 72nd in Turnover margin.....a huge improvement from the Wojcik years where we were nearly last in the nation in turnover margin.
Woodard shot a nice 37% from the three and probably would have topped 40 if he had some open shots. Ray had a nice 35.7 % but everyone else was sub 30% ........Murray State had four players around the 40% mark and Dante Swanson used to tease us with high 40's.
Where do we go from here? Rep is leaving as I suspect will a couple more. I don't know the academic side of things but that could be a problem too. Not sure about Littlejohn or Dew. Dew shot 20.8% from the field....not what I had hoped for but was a good rebounder in his short time on the court. Littlejohn confused us all by burning his redshirt and then playing six minutes total.
Birt and Taplin give us some hope, but to compete with SMU, Cincy, and UCONN, we have to have some scoring beef inside. We really need an inside power like Auburn ...but so do 25 other teams ahead of us.
Haith's recruiting in this spring and particularly next November will determine the fate of TU basketball for several years. We are going to find out soon if these are going to be Nolan/Tubby/Self
glory years of TU basketball or Barnett, Phillips, and Wojcik years.
In closing I must say I have not seen a team compete harder for an entire season, never once giving up and giving the fans an overachievement in our first year of the AAC. The AAC now knows Tulsa is in this to win it. Thanks to all the Coaches and Players for an enjoyable ride.
This post was edited on 3/25 9:11 AM by I.I.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
