After getting incredibly fortunate to beat UTSA when Tulane played by far its worst game in the AAC. the Wave was much better against North Texas on Saturday but ran into a better team that shot lights out uncharacteristically. As someone commented on my twitter feed, it resembled a lot of the games last year where a team had unlikely guys get hot from outside and dominated Tulane in rebounding. The similarity was not coincidental. Tulane was less active defensively than earlier in the conference schedule, allowing North Texas to corral the loose balls and get confident when it knocked down some open looks early. Tulane was playing its fourth game in 10 days and second in a row on the road while North Texas, which is really good at home, had not played since Monday.
With that loss, Tulane will not have a Quad 1 or Quad 2 win entering the AAC tournament unless UAB rises from 115 to inside the top 75 by the time the teams meet (and the Blazers likely would drop right out of the top 75 if it dropped that game), but none of that matters since any postseason possibility went down the drain with the abysmal non-conference performance unless the Wave wins the AAC tourney. A top four seed and a double bye to the quarterfinals is very much in play, Tulane has a half-game on on fifth-place FAU along with the tiebreaker advantage and a full-game lead (but not the tiebreaker) on Temple, which has played its past two games without Jamal Mashburn Jr, the nation's second-leading scorer. Tulane's next six games are against teams with losing records in the AAC, and it is 7-0 so far against anyone outside of the top five. Wins in five of those games, which is doable but not certain, would make Tulane 12-5 entering the UAB game and a virtual lock for the double bye.
After a much needed break, Tulane hosts No. 185 Rice (in the NET) this Saturday and No. 184 East Carolina the following Wednesday. It travels to No. 150 Wichita State on Feb. 23, hosts No. 258 Charlotte on Feb. 26, travels to No. 287 Tulsa on March 1 , plays at ECU in Ron Hunter's personal house of horrors (he is 0-5 there) on March 6 and hosts UAB on March 9.
The way Tulane was playing last month, it would have an excellent chance to win the first six games on that list, but the offense is hurting right now and every game has become a grind. Leading scorer Kaleb Banks has scored 4, 6 and 2 points in the past three games, totally losing confidence in his shot except for one massive 3 during the last-minute comeback at UTSA. Teams are guarding Kam Williams tightly, daring him to beat them off the dribble, which definitely is not his strength as a freshman, and he has stopped connecting on the long-range 3s he was hitting earlier in the year. At least Gregg Glenn snapped out of his three-game funk against North Texas because Tulane is going to need the good Glenn the rest of the way. I think Banks will find his game again because he has the right attitude, works hard and is too good to be this bad offensively. He was done after his first two free throws were not even close against North Texas, but he will not face a defense as good as that for the rest of the regular season. Mari Jordan, Tulane's best player off the bench, also has totally lost confidence in his ability to put the ball in the basket. That's too many guys slumping to make consistent winning sustainable no matter how hard Tulane plays on defense or how weak the schedule is. You can't count on Asher Woods replicating his 18- and 20-point back-to-back games from last week, although he is definitely better than I thought and one of the few guys on the team who will consistently hunt his shot. Rowan Brumbaugh is playing at an elite level but needs help offensively from everyone else. Like I wrote in my last basketball post, this team is a shooter short to win comfortably against anyone in this league, but it can overcome that issue with defensive effort and Banks regaining his form. Certainly Tulane should beat Rice at home after a week's rest. Then we will see if it can continue beating the beatable teams. It would be an underdog by point spread at Wichita State and ECU right now.
Again, it is all about Tulane getting that double bye and then playing its best basketball in Fort Worth. Hunter's two good teams played well in the quarterfinals, beating Temple in 2022 without an injured Jalen Cook before having the impossible task of playing Houston in the semifinals and beating a streaking Wichita State team that had given it all sorts of trouble in the regular season in 2023 before turning in a pathetic effort against a motivated Memphis team it had swept in the regular season in a 40-point semifinal loss. That group was not playing well entering the tournament despite its 12-6 conference record, nearly ending the regular season with a five-skid skid (pulling out two close ones at home to finish it) and entering the tournament exhausted after playing three games in five days because of having to make up a postponed contest against East Carolina.
Hunter's starters are not playing nearly as many minutes as his past teams (Brumbaugh at No. 8 is the only player in the top 10), and the bench goes four deep, so this team should be fresher entering the tournament. The next few weeks will determine whether it has a realistic chance to do something in Fort Worth or is too limited offensively to win more than one game (if that). No one in the AAC is unbeatable, but Memphis and UAB (because of their offensive prowess) and North Texas (because of the way it defends) have higher ceilings. And FAU bears watching. After getting defenestrated at home by Memphis, losing by 15 by Tulane and getting outscored by 24 in the second half at North Texas, FAU has won three in a row by more than 20 points. It was picked third in the preseason poll and appears to have found its groove. I expect Tulane and FAU to be the 4 and 5 seeds and meet in the quarterfinals, so the likely path would be beating FAU, then No. 1 seed Memphis (although UAB has an outside shot at the top spot), then either UAB or North Texas (or maybe Temple if Mashburn gets over his foot issue) in the final.
With that loss, Tulane will not have a Quad 1 or Quad 2 win entering the AAC tournament unless UAB rises from 115 to inside the top 75 by the time the teams meet (and the Blazers likely would drop right out of the top 75 if it dropped that game), but none of that matters since any postseason possibility went down the drain with the abysmal non-conference performance unless the Wave wins the AAC tourney. A top four seed and a double bye to the quarterfinals is very much in play, Tulane has a half-game on on fifth-place FAU along with the tiebreaker advantage and a full-game lead (but not the tiebreaker) on Temple, which has played its past two games without Jamal Mashburn Jr, the nation's second-leading scorer. Tulane's next six games are against teams with losing records in the AAC, and it is 7-0 so far against anyone outside of the top five. Wins in five of those games, which is doable but not certain, would make Tulane 12-5 entering the UAB game and a virtual lock for the double bye.
After a much needed break, Tulane hosts No. 185 Rice (in the NET) this Saturday and No. 184 East Carolina the following Wednesday. It travels to No. 150 Wichita State on Feb. 23, hosts No. 258 Charlotte on Feb. 26, travels to No. 287 Tulsa on March 1 , plays at ECU in Ron Hunter's personal house of horrors (he is 0-5 there) on March 6 and hosts UAB on March 9.
The way Tulane was playing last month, it would have an excellent chance to win the first six games on that list, but the offense is hurting right now and every game has become a grind. Leading scorer Kaleb Banks has scored 4, 6 and 2 points in the past three games, totally losing confidence in his shot except for one massive 3 during the last-minute comeback at UTSA. Teams are guarding Kam Williams tightly, daring him to beat them off the dribble, which definitely is not his strength as a freshman, and he has stopped connecting on the long-range 3s he was hitting earlier in the year. At least Gregg Glenn snapped out of his three-game funk against North Texas because Tulane is going to need the good Glenn the rest of the way. I think Banks will find his game again because he has the right attitude, works hard and is too good to be this bad offensively. He was done after his first two free throws were not even close against North Texas, but he will not face a defense as good as that for the rest of the regular season. Mari Jordan, Tulane's best player off the bench, also has totally lost confidence in his ability to put the ball in the basket. That's too many guys slumping to make consistent winning sustainable no matter how hard Tulane plays on defense or how weak the schedule is. You can't count on Asher Woods replicating his 18- and 20-point back-to-back games from last week, although he is definitely better than I thought and one of the few guys on the team who will consistently hunt his shot. Rowan Brumbaugh is playing at an elite level but needs help offensively from everyone else. Like I wrote in my last basketball post, this team is a shooter short to win comfortably against anyone in this league, but it can overcome that issue with defensive effort and Banks regaining his form. Certainly Tulane should beat Rice at home after a week's rest. Then we will see if it can continue beating the beatable teams. It would be an underdog by point spread at Wichita State and ECU right now.
Again, it is all about Tulane getting that double bye and then playing its best basketball in Fort Worth. Hunter's two good teams played well in the quarterfinals, beating Temple in 2022 without an injured Jalen Cook before having the impossible task of playing Houston in the semifinals and beating a streaking Wichita State team that had given it all sorts of trouble in the regular season in 2023 before turning in a pathetic effort against a motivated Memphis team it had swept in the regular season in a 40-point semifinal loss. That group was not playing well entering the tournament despite its 12-6 conference record, nearly ending the regular season with a five-skid skid (pulling out two close ones at home to finish it) and entering the tournament exhausted after playing three games in five days because of having to make up a postponed contest against East Carolina.
Hunter's starters are not playing nearly as many minutes as his past teams (Brumbaugh at No. 8 is the only player in the top 10), and the bench goes four deep, so this team should be fresher entering the tournament. The next few weeks will determine whether it has a realistic chance to do something in Fort Worth or is too limited offensively to win more than one game (if that). No one in the AAC is unbeatable, but Memphis and UAB (because of their offensive prowess) and North Texas (because of the way it defends) have higher ceilings. And FAU bears watching. After getting defenestrated at home by Memphis, losing by 15 by Tulane and getting outscored by 24 in the second half at North Texas, FAU has won three in a row by more than 20 points. It was picked third in the preseason poll and appears to have found its groove. I expect Tulane and FAU to be the 4 and 5 seeds and meet in the quarterfinals, so the likely path would be beating FAU, then No. 1 seed Memphis (although UAB has an outside shot at the top spot), then either UAB or North Texas (or maybe Temple if Mashburn gets over his foot issue) in the final.
