With its loss at Wichita State on Saturday, Tulane continued its conference-long pattern of losing on the road to the league's upper-division teams while beating everyone else. If Las Vegas made odds today for every league game the Wave had played, it would be 9-0 in games it was favored and 0-5 in games it was the underdog. For anyone pointing out the Temple loss and where the Owls are now, that was an upper echelon AAC team when Jamal Mashburn, then the nation's second-leading scorer, was playing.

Up next are two games where Tulane will be favored--home to cellar dweller Charlotte and at slumping Tulsa. Nothing is guaranteed, and the Wave was incredibly fortunate to win at UTSA earlier, but this team should be 11-5 heading into the final week, when it will play at ECU as an underdog and host UAB as an underdog. I believe going 11-7 would earn Tulane the No, 4 seed in the AAC tournament, but it's not a sure thing. East Carolina easily could be 10-7 if it beats the Wave, with one game left at FAU. Wichita State could finish 11-7, too, but that would require the Shockers to beat UAB at home and North Texas on the road, which despite their six-game streak appears very unlikely. Both Wichita State and ECU would win tiebreakers against Tulane at 11-7 (Wichita State based on the head-to-head win and ECU based on beating UAB and Wichita State), so the key for Tulane is to get to 12-6 and take other results out of play. Charlotte and Tulsa are must wins. I do not expect to Tulane to win at ECU, but a win there would be huge. I do expect Tulane to beat UAB at home, but it would be the first win all year against a team at that level.

Ron Hunter, Rowan Brumbaugh and Gregg Glenn spoke before practice today.

HUNTER

On if he was considering lineup change with Mari Jordan starting, as he intimated after Wichita State game:

"I am going to give myself another day to think about it. I never try to overreact after a game, so I look at the big picture of everything. We'll see. If I did it, it would be something to either ignite us early or ignite a player, so I haven't really decided which way I'm going to go with that, but the minutes won't change regardless of what I do."

On what need to clean up from Wichita State loss:

"Really on the road we're just such a different team than we are at home. That's what happens when you are a young team. We've got to play more consistent basketball when we get on the road like we do here. We got off to a bad start and boy we took the lead at halftime. We got off to another slow start and then tried to fight back. That's what happens whether you're a young NBA player or a college player. When you get home you feel comfortable and play a lot better. We've got to take that same energy on the road."

On why he thinks they can clean it up:

"Because everything we've asked them to do, they've gotten better, whether it's defense, offense, taking care of the basketball. Every single aspect of the game we've asked them to, they've gotten better at. What's great about the conference tournament is it's on a neutral floor. You're not playing at Wichita Stare or Memphis or something like that. I'm excited because everything we've put ahead of them, they've done."

On Brumbaugh:

"I know CJ Haggerty gets a lot of credit, but Rowan by far outside of him is the best point guard in this league, a true point guard. He's playing really well on both sides--offensively and defensively. There are a lot of good players, but I think this kid is a player-of-the-year candidate. He's having that type of year.. He's a typical what I call a Tulane player, where he fits in the community, is a selfless kind of kid and he just continues to get better. A lot of it is just his confidence in being able to play and having the freedom to play, and that's what I'm giving him."

On his ability to score in all areas:

"He's worked on that from day 1. There has never been a point where it's hey, you need to get in the gym and get better. Sometimes we have to pull him away from himself and say enjoy it and relax a little bit. He's doing great. I can't wait until after the season when Rowan takes me fishing. I've never fished in my life before, and when I recruited him we talked about that. He promised me he's going to take me fishing. Can you imagine me sitting for three or four hours waiting on a fish. I think they eat worms, bread, what is it? I've never fished in my life. He's got a (fishing) place, so Rowan's going to take me fishing for the first time in my life."

On Charlotte the second time:

"They've had a week off. It seems like it's been six months since we played them. I think by now both teams are probably a little different. They won their last game, so they are coming in with confidence, but we've got to get back to being one of the top 20 teams defensively in the country, and we didn't do that at Wichita State. No blocked shots, guys were driving all over the place, so that's been our whole focus the last day or so."

On being good at home:

"I think this is a great home environment. When I took the job here it was the first thing I talked about it, and it has developed to that. This is just a hard place to play. People don't want to come here and play. It used to be coaches always wanted to come to Tulane and get a win, and we did. It's not just the players. It's the environment. This is a hard place to play."

On Kam Williams needing to be more aggressive:

"That's the next part of his development. He's still a teenager. He just played against eight seniors that were 24 or 25 years old. The next part of his development is being able to find different ways of being able to score."

BRUMBAUGH

On what went wrong at Wichita State:

"We played selfish. They made us play one-on-one basketball. They played deep drop coverage and they took away shooters. The crowd and the environment sped us up. Those two things."

On five assists as a team:

"When we have low assists, we usually don't play well. When we have high assists, we usually win games."

On his mindset:

"I just want to win, so if the game's calling me for to make shots then I've got to do that. My mindset's just all winning."

On his game:

"I used to be more kind of flashy, but at the end of the day the only day that will fulfill you is winning on a team like this, not your individual stats. We can't worry about next year or what anybody's saying in our ear. We just have to take it game by game and understand we have a chance to make the tournament if we really lock in and take it game by game and possession by possession."

On Gregg Glenn's game at Wichita State:

"It helps a lot. In certain games guys are going to be hot because that's what the defense gives us. They played a deep drop. They took away our shooters, so Gregg did what he had to do. We just have to take advantage of what the defense gives us."

On home advantage:

"The crowd helps a lot. I hope more students can start coming to the games. Everywhere we go it's always packed, but then here it's not that many students. Its kind of weird. I'd just say being at home, being comfortable in our gym helps a lot. Our defense throws them off because not many teams play our matchup man-to-man. It's really bizarre to see sometimes even when you scout it."

On why he plays with confidence:

"My confidence is in Jesus Christ. I have the lord's peach in me always, so that's where the confidence comes from."

GLENN

On his big game at Wichita State:

"I felt really comfortable. I'm just taking it day by day. I got fouled a lot that game and they didn't call it, but at the end of the day you've just got to keep playing."

On tough atmosphere at Wichita State:

'I actually love that type of atmosphere. It gets my hyped for games."

On importance of finishing in top four:

"It's really important for us to be in the top four so we can know what we've got to do for the first game we go into and do what we do."

Tulane men's hoops lost five scholarship players to transfer after last year. Here is how they have fared.

1) Sion James (Duke)

STATS: 8.3 points on 52.4 percent shooting and is 20 of 49 on 3-pointers with 4.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists.

COMMENT: There's nothing Tulane could have done about losing James to Duke. He ended up in the perfect situation for him because he is not capable of carrying a team but is a perfect complementary piece on a national championship-caliber roster. He loves his time at Tulane but struggled defensively when he was forced to play center on defense two years ago because Kevin Cross could not defend without fouling and was too valuable offensively to be on the bench. Collin Holloway took over that role last year and struggled as well.

2) Kolby King (Butler)

STATS: 5.4 points on 44.7 percent shooting, 4.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists

COMMENT: Just as he did at Tulane after a strong start in China and early in the 2023-24 season, King fell out of favor at Butler. He's not a point guard and he drifts during games. Butler has been a disappointment this year, and King, who started only four games and has not scored in double figures since Jan. 15, is one of the reasons.

3) Collin Holloway (Samford)

STATS: 8.9 points on 39.9 percent shooting with 5.1 rebounds and 2.0 assists.

COMMENT: I am harsher on Holloway than almost anyone I've ever covered, and it has nothing to do with his personality or work ethic. He is a good dude. It is simply that he has the worst hands of any good player I've seen. He could not catch passes and struggled to latch onto rebounds despite having good instincts on the boards, one of the reasons Tulane's rebounding was horrific last year even when compared to other years under Hunter. He had a good knack for finishing inside, although shot blockers bothered him because of his lack of height and pure athleticism, but those hands killed Tulane. I have not seen any of Samford's games, but I'm pretty sure they did not expect the precipitous drop in his shooting percentage from better than 50 percent when he was at Tulane. He hit 6 of his first 11 3s this year but could not sustain that type of success with his mediocre set shot from beyond the arc and is 21 of 70 since then. He has not scored in double figures since Feb. 1, averaging less than 4 points in his last six games. Samford expects to win the SoCon tourney for the second year in a row but is in third place after running away with the regular season title last season.

4) Jordan Wood (Stetson)

STATS: 12.3 points on 45 percent shooting with 3.9 rebounds and 1.4 assists.

COMMENT: Wood was a mistake pickup last year as a grad transfer from Howard because he could not handle the significant jump in competition, quickly falling out of the rotation and playing in only nine games. He has found his niche at lower-level Stetson, averaging a career high with 51 3s and scoring between 23 and 26 points four times. He would not have been much of a factor if he had stayed at Tulane.

5) Mier Panoam (North Dakota)

STATS: 13.2 points on 46 percent shooting with 5.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists

COMMENT: I was surprised he left because he was at Tulane only one year, had a lot of athletic ability and would have returned to a team nearly bereft of proven experience, but he probably made the right choice. Athletic as heck, he won Tulane's fan day dunk contest last year but was a total non-factor during the season. I'm not sure whether he would have developed or not in a second year, but he certainly has flourished at a lower level, starting every game for North Dakota and having a stretch of 13 games in double figures with a high of 28 at one point. North Dakota is not good, though, with an 11-18 overall record and a 5-9 conference mark.

Nice win in frigid conditions in Hammond Wednesday, with Tulane rallying from a 3-0 deficit to win 5-3 while its bullpen held Southeastern scoreless after Will Clements departed in the first inning. Not much can be gleaned from a game in weather like that, but it would have been easy to go through the motions with that early deficit, and Tulane fought back. from its first deficit of the year and is now No. 1 in the nation in RPI, which is cool but means absolutely nothing at this point.

Loyola Marymount swept Seattle 10-3, 17-11 and 12-6 over the weekend, lost to Cal Poly 9-1 on Monday and beat future Tulane opponent Long Beach State 7-4 on Tuesday, all at home. The Lions were were picked sixth out of nine teams in the preseason West Coast Conference coaches poll and last made the postseason in 2019, when thy won the WCC tourney and advanced to the championship game of a regional at UCLA. They have gone 20-29, 20-34-1, 29-24 and 24-30 in the past four years. The only time they ever made the CWS was 1986, when they beat LSU in their opening game in the Tigers' first CWS appearance.

Since I wrote a little about myself in the basketball post, I might as well do it about baseball, too. The only time I played baseball was when I 6 or 7 in the Carrolton Boosters League and before T-ball existed or coach pitch existed. Kids pitched, and the results were comical at times. I was the youngest player on my team and started off well, but after getting hit a couple of times, I became scared of the ball and did next to nothing at the plate for the rest of the year for the Cincinnati Reds (we took names of MLB teams). Then I broke a finger when a girl across the street accidentally dropped a stone on it while we were playing and missed the last third of the season. I played softball recreationally in high school and after college, but I never stepped on a baseball field to play again.

That said, I attended probably 200 Tulane baseball games from 1980 to 1986 before I went off to college. Since my father had a staff card (he was the Episcopal minister for the Tulane campus), I got in free to every game back then and would bike to the ballpark right after I got home from school on weekdays to catch the second game of the doubleheaders (which started at 1 p.m.) or the end of the single games (which started at 2). As a total sports junkie, I went to almost all of the weekend games, too and attended every game at the 1982 regional at UNO (watching Augie Schmidt and Brian DeValk hit solo homers in the top of the ninth to break a tie in the opener and watching a balk send in UNO with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth of the elimination game after the Wave tied it with a double to the right field wall in the top of the ninth, but the would-be go-ahead run was thrown out at the plate by a perfect throw and relay) and almost every game at the 1986 regional in Baton Rouge, including the Monday finish of the game suspended near the end by rain. I went to a lot of games at Florida my freshman year since the field was a two blocks walk from my dorm, but since no one wanted to go with me, I lost interest and never enjoyed them as much as the Tulane games even though Florida made the CWS for the first time ever my sophomore year. I covered the Florida baseball team for the student newspaper in 1990 and for my job the next four years before it became too much and I stuck to football and basketball for the last 13 years I was there.

Anyway, I feel like I am more familiar with and understand college baseball as much as almost anyone alive because of all that time spend at the ballpark, although my knowledge is lacking in some areas. I would be afraid to do a radio broadcast because I struggle to tell the difference between off speed pitches or recognize different types of fastballs. I've never pitched in my life.

I talked to Jay Uhlman, Anthony Izzio and Michael Lombardi yesterday.

UHLMAN

On comeback:

"I would be lying if I said I didn't have flashbacks from last year when we were down 5-0 in the first and almost came back and won, but Clem did such a nice job the weekend before, and for our guys to pick him up like he picked them up was really huge. Our bullpen had different degrees of cleanliness, but guys that maybe were teetering finished the job and then we had some really spectacular outings in there."

On Lombardi's five Ks in six batters faced while earning the save:

"He did that last year, so he kind of likes the mound there. It was coming out good and he had it all working. Benbrook was spectacular, and Montiel got balled on some pitches that were strikes and changed counts, and the old him probably would have gone south, but he did not implode and just jammed it in there and did a really nice job, so I'm really proud of those guys. Getting (Garrett) Payne out there and (Wes) Burton out there and getting Gavin Smith back out there, they were tremendous, and there was never a sense of panic. We just kind of did what we do."

On how cold it felt:

'I spent 13 years in Reno and I would tell you that's the only place on Earth I've felt like that. It was really cold."

On Lombardi's development as a pitcher rather than just a thrower:

"He would tell you that he hasn't really gotten to the point where it's just wherever he wants to throw it. Last night was like that. That's the vision you see of him. If he can do that every time, he's a Big Leaguer. He's working his way into that. When your jobs are split by two different times of the game, it's really difficult. That's the reason not a lot of people outside of Shohei Otani do it, but when we think of Mike on the good side of that, that's what we see. He's probably not thrown as many strikes as he'd want to in his career."

On his smarts helping him carry the double load (he was member of National Honor Society in high school):

"He's a special kid. Not only is he really good at school, but he's a really heady baseball player, very cerebral, thinks the game like a coach. We are grateful to have him in the program."

On bunting him to score run with 3-0 deficit:

"You had the potential for him to hit into a double play, and we needed something to break the ice, and he was able to execute that and scored one and moved one up. That was a big part of it."

On his scouting report for Loyola Marymount:

"They are going to be well coached, West Coast-style. They'll be a little different that way. They've got some runners. They'll bang it pretty good and their starting pitching is really good. They are 4-1 for a reason. It will be a fun weekend of competitive, good baseball."

What sports people like is a personal choice, and for a variety of reasons, basketball has almost always been a distance third to football and baseball for Tulane fans. For me, it's different. Basketball was the one sport I played well, although that's a relative term. In my sophomore year at Florida I became obsessed, spending at least two hours at Florida Gym every day after classes on the B recreational courts (the real players were on the A courts) as my GPA went down, playing pickup games to 10 with each basket counting as 1 point and the winning team staying on the floor to take on the next challengers. Then, in March of 1988, I took a ridiculous 30-foot shot while dribbling down the court and landed on someone's foot, spraining an ankle horrendously, to the point where it blew up like a balloon. I was on crutches for six weeks, having to use the crank elevator to get to the third floor of my dorm for a while and never regained the same flexibility in the ankle, which was misdiagnosed as an outside sprain at the infirmary when it was an inside sprain, which also affects the knee. Back in New Orleans that summer, I had to go to physical therapy to learn how to walk properly again, and although I returned to play basketball in the fall of my junior year, it was more of a hobby than a full-time thing from then on.

College basketball in general was my obsession back then. Florida made its first NCAA tournament in school history in my freshman year, when I was one of the only people on my dorm floor to have season tickets at the start of the year and went to games by myself through at least January. The Gators ended up reaching the Sweet 16, but when they were losing by double digits to 11 seed North Carolina State in the second half of the first round, I kicked a hole in the big chair I shared with dorm roommates. The Gators rallied to win comfortably, crushed 3 seed Purdue in the second round and had eventual national championship runner-up Syracuse on the ropes late in the second half before faltering in the Sweet 16.

College basketball is not what it used to be, and the end of games can be interminable with all of the timeouts and officiating reviews to determine how much time should be on the clock, but I still pay incredibly close attention to it even if I do not watch nearly as much as I used to during the regular season. Nothing, and I mean nothing, bothers me more than when Tulane football holds its Pro Day during the first round of the NCAA tournament, which I still watch from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. straight through on both days if my job lets me.

My point in all this rambling, if there is one, is I feel like I know basketball, and this Tulane is talented and fun to watch. My eyes tell me that, and the recruiting rankings back that up. As a group, these guys had higher high school ratings than any group since the heyday of Perry Clark, which was a different level for sure. Last night Tulane blocked nine East Carolina shots after blocking 10 Rice shots on Saturday, which has to be a school record for a two-game stretch but is not look-uppable. This team is rendering the constant carping over the years about Ron Hunter's matchup zone being unworkable as a complete falsehood. He has the right players for his system now, and they are all over the floor causing problems for opponents, ranking first in the AAC in field goal percentage defense, second in 3-point field goal percentage defense, first in blocks and second in scoring defense. The offense has been more up and down, but if Kaleb Banks explosion last night proves sustainable, this will be a dangerous team on that end of the floor, too.

Last night Tulane curb-stomped a previously hot ECU team for 32 minutes, forcing its white hot two leading scorers into inefficient games while going ahead by 18. I thought Hunter took the air out of the ball too early, and the Wave had some bad possessions down the stretch that made the game look a lot closer than it actually was, but it never reached the danger zone, and freshman Kam Williams sealed the deal with the ninth block of the night on a 3-point attempt that could have cut the deficit to 2 in the final 10 seconds.

Theres no question the AAC is the weakest it has ever been. That's fact. But it also is not like the dregs of basketball. Memphis beat NCAA tournament locks Missouri, Connecticut, Michigan State, Clemson and Ole Miss in its non-conference schedule but has struggled to put away AAC opponents in all but two of its 13 games, losing two outright. Tulane is playing well regardless of the competition, and its upside is high heading into the AAC tourney. Beating Wichita State on Sunday will be no easy task--the Shockers just beat Memphis and have won four in a row entering tonight's game at FAU--but a win would go a long way toward securing a top-four seed in the AAC tourney, which absolutely, positively is winnable for Memphis, North Texas, UAB and Tulane. If basketball's not your thing, that's fine. But this team is worth watching and paying attention to if it is.

Here is what Hunter had to say after the 86-81 win.

“We got the win, and in about two weeks or three months from now, no one is going to know whether we won or lost the game, but we have to close out games better than that. We had an 18-point game with eight minutes to go and then we just relaxed. We have to better than that if we want to get to the level we want to get to. Before we got to that time, we played really good basketball. We defended them. I think they are 19th in the country in offensive rebounding (actually they were 27th) and we did a good of that. We actually outrebounded them for the game, but then we relaxed. The last two games offensively we are really starting to come out of a slump now.”

On nine blocked shots:

“That’s why I love this team. We think we can do some special things, especially when we get in the conference tournament because we really believe in our defense. We’ve got great length. Our team D early on our frontline was really good. We were challenging shots, we were flying around. We couldn’t get our guards to do that. I thought they played a little stagnant, but our frontline was really active for the most part in this game.”

On not closing out:

“We relaxed. Our intensity went down. We got the 18-point lead and we started scoreboard watching, we started missing free throws and that’s when you have to turn it up. You can’t let a team like that back in it. We let them get back in it and were very tentative to end the game.”

On Banks bounce-back

“I think Kaleb would say the first thing we did was we won the game. We are 9-4. We know we need him. I thought the last couple of games he played well. He just didn’t have the offensive numbers. When he concentrates on just those rebounds. He has seven rebounds all in the first half, and that gets him going and he got some deflections and a couple of blocked shots and he saw the ball go in. They opened up in that zone, and he got a free look, and once he sees it go in, lights out.

On how much Banks opens up things for other guys:

“I’m not sure how much it opens up. Our backcourt’s been playing lights out. You can’t expect them to carry you the whole time, so we need this. We were struggling to get 60 (points) and all of a sudden it’s back-to-back games where we’re almost getting 90 points. We need Kaleb, he knows that, but not necessarily off his scoring. Just his activity. When he’s active like that, we’re a different team.”

On build-up last few games:

“What we love is that no one talks about us. When we watch the broadcasts they talk about everybody else and no one says anything about Tulane has a chance, so we just want to keep winning, be better the next day and see what happens at the end. I heard someone say on TV the other day there’s four or five teams that can win the tournament, and he didn’t list us. I picked that up. I appreciate him saying that. Just like he was probably the same guy who said we would finish last in this league. What we want to do is keep bringing our defense to the fight. If we bring our defense to the fight, you’ve got a problem.”

On stopping Walker and Felton:

“We’ve been doing this all year. Our guys have been shutting down the leading scorers and trying to make somebody else go win a game. We wanted them to see bodies and wanted them to be volume shooters tonight. Our length really bothered them. When you block some shots early, they started looking around to see what the other block was coming from. Those are two really good players, and we did a good job on them.”

BANKS

On slump-busting game:

“Yeah, for the most part it was seeing the ball going through the basket a couple of times. That felt good to me to get my confidence up. I just found ways to help the team win. I had a couple of good blocks tonight and my shooting was great, too.”