Sports Info wrote:

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for their second conference win in a row.

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In an epic battle between #191 and #251 in the nation.  Hold the presses.

I want to make a point here about Tulane's basketball programs, both men's and women's. The women's team is at Texas Tech and the men's team is at Texas A&M. Neither team had an opportunity to even start their seasons at their home facilities and both will be on the road all season long. There was a lot of hubbub about the Green Wave football team, but remember that fall practice had concluded for them when Katrina hit. Basketball and other sports will suffer far worse than football did.

Joye McNelis' team is struggling and this win over Tulane ought to have an asterisk next to it...kind of like playing a high school team with all the issues they've had.

It's pretty much a dead issue when Tulane is ranked #212 and USM #247 this morning.  The game's outcome yesterday didn't make a sound in the forest.

Tulane also started out the season on top of the conference until conference play started. What you fail to point out is that the Lady Eagles are 3-2 in conference play now, which is a WINNING CONFERENCE RECORD and fifth place in the conference standings. Compared to last year, this is an improvement for the team.

The next two games are crucial for the Lady Eagles b/c they will face East Carolina and Marshall. ECU has a 10-5 record (2-2 in CUSA) and Marshall has a 9-5 record (4-0 in CUSA). They can coast a bit after that because they will play UAB (8-7, 1-3 CUSA), Memphis (2-13, 0-4 CUSA) and UCF (4-11, 2-3 CUSA). They already defeated UCF once this season (a 61-50 win on Dec. 31).

Better Boy wrote:

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Joye McNelis' team is struggling and this win over Tulane ought to have an asterisk next to it...kind of like playing a high school team with all the issues they've had.

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Lady Eagles fan wrote:

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Tulane also started out the season on top of the conference until conference play started. What you fail to point out is that the Lady Eagles are 3-2 in conference play now, which is a WINNING CONFERENCE RECORD and fifth place in the conference standings. Compared to last year, this is an improvement for the team. The next two games are crucial for the Lady Eagles b/c they will face East Carolina and Marshall. ECU has a 10-5 record (2-2 in CUSA) and Marshall has a 9-5 record (4-0 in CUSA). They can coast a bit after that because they will play UAB (8-7, 1-3 CUSA), Memphis (2-13, 0-4 CUSA) and UCF (4-11, 2-3 CUSA). They already defeated UCF once this season (a 61-50 win on Dec. 31). Better Boy wrote: Joye McNelis' team is struggling and this win over Tulane ought to have an asterisk next to it...kind of like playing a high school team with all the issues they've had.

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In your first comment, keep in mind that this is not the same C-USA that existed prior to this year.  Comparing this year's 3-2 start to last year's start is not the same in that sense. 

I have done countless feature stories on college players at various schools for the newspaper I work at. Every single story on a basketball player that I have done, the coach and players have all said the same thing about players who freshmen or newly transferred from a JC/CC. They've all said the first year is about making a dramatic change from high school/Junior College to a tougher level of competition. I've heard that from NAIA coaches, all the way up to D-I coaches in every sport. They've all said that players have to spend their first year adjusting to a different style of basketball and they have to learn to mature.

I've covered high school basketball games and I've covered college basketball games, and they are completely different. From the fact that high school games have four 8 minute quarters while colleges have two 20 minute halves, all the way down to the fact that the balls are different sizes at the two levels, everything is fundamentally different.

How can you expect a team full of freshmen to find immediate success as soon as they step on a court when you expect students to change their study habits dramatically from high school to college?

It's like expecting a successful baseball player to immediately hit homeruns in the minor leagues. First off, college players use aluminum bats, while the pros use wooden bats. Anyone who has ever played baseball knows you hit harder and farther with an aluminum bat than with a wooden bat.

Players have to learn how to adjust to the different style, and it's that way in every sport when you go from one level to another.

Better Boy wrote:

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Lady Eagles fan wrote: Tulane also started out the season on top of the conference until conference play started. What you fail to point out is that the Lady Eagles are 3-2 in conference play now, which is a WINNING CONFERENCE RECORD and fifth place in the conference standings. Compared to last year, this is an improvement for the team. The next two games are crucial for the Lady Eagles b/c they will face East Carolina and Marshall. ECU has a 10-5 record (2-2 in CUSA) and Marshall has a 9-5 record (4-0 in CUSA). They can coast a bit after that because they will play UAB (8-7, 1-3 CUSA), Memphis (2-13, 0-4 CUSA) and UCF (4-11, 2-3 CUSA). They already defeated UCF once this season (a 61-50 win on Dec. 31). Yes, the Lady Eagles are officially 1 GAME over .500 in CUSA play. What bothers me about the Lady Eagles in not who they play in conference (that will bother me a little later on) but who they've lost to out of conference. The Lady Eagles have lost to Southern Utah, South Alabama, Northwestern State, Liberty, Elon, Mercer, Arkansas-Little Rock, and Louisiana-Monroe. Which of these teams plays in a conference that is in the same class as CUSA? None. I feel for the players. I know they give it their all every game. What most people around here think is that coaching is the element that is lacking for both the women's and men's teams. The same guy who has made all sorts of bad decisions academically has also made bad decisions athletically. I will be surprised if USM goes better than 4-7 over its last 11 games, given that 5 of the 11 are on the road, along with the 2 you highlighted above. USM will probably win one that they shouldn't, but they'll also probably lose one that they shouldn't. I look for the Lady Eagles to finish 10-18, going out in the first round of the CUSA tournament.

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You're right, and once Shannon Stueber and Emer Foley are off the injured list, the Lady Eagles will have more depth and experience. Both had season ending injuries though. Foley has a torn ACL from when she was playing on the Irish national team last summer and Stueber had a concussion early in the season that she's still recovering from.

As for Deondra Carter (the player who abruptly transferred to Xavier), I suspect it had nothing to do with McNelis. The coach was very fond of Carter last year and she was one of the players McNelis was looking to build around this year. Carter had an invested interest at Southern Miss b/c she was dating a member of the boys basketball team over the spring, so I'd wager her departure was due to things in her personal life that are none of our business. And all the other players that were "run off", no one on last year's team was recruited by McNelis and the ones who left, with the exception of Carter and Dianca Jones, many of them were impact players who had the ability to compete at the D-I level; decent players, just a bit out of their league at Southern Miss. Another player who left, Erica Grant, was a junior transfer who wasn't able to play much last year because she sustained two shoulder injuries. When I was doing the story on the players leaving for the Printz last year, she told me the injuries were the reason she was giving up basketball for good.

And Jones admitting that she did break team rules and probably deserved to be kicked off.

And the theory about bringing in high school players instead of JuCos is that the high school players will be able to develop more, they can bond more and will be around longer (which means the coaches are not continually having to shake things up every couple of years).

Give these coaches a break, even the Eagletalkers last year were saying Eustachy probably wouldn't find success until his third season at Southern Miss.

As for McNelis, remember that Rick Reeves' last Southern Miss team started out 12-1 in non conference play before doing a huge belly flop in CUSA games (they went 2-11 in CUSA that year).

In McNelis' first season, the Lady Eagles went 3-11 in conference play when the conference was tougher, which is technically an improvement over Rick Reeves last season. The Lady Eagles went 1-4 in the first five conference games of last season, while they've started 3-2 this year.

Better Boy wrote:

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Curt Yeomans wrote: I have done countless feature stories on college players at various schools... and they have to learn to mature. I've covered high school basketball games and ...everything is fundamentally different. How can you expect a team full of freshmen to find immediate success as soon as they step on a court when you expect students to change their study habits dramatically from high school to college? It's like expecting a successful baseball player to immediately hit homeruns in the minor leagues. First off, college players use aluminum bats, while the pros use wooden bats. Anyone who has ever played baseball knows you hit harder and farther with an aluminum bat than with a wooden bat. Players have to learn how to adjust to the different style, and it's that way in every sport when you go from one level to another. First, I don't need to be lectured by you on the differences between sports at different levels. I would say that I probably understand those differences on a more personal level than most people. Second, in the case of both Larry Eustachy and Joye McNelis, there should be experienced players on both basketball teams that would contribute greatly to the TEAM concept. However, for a variety of reasons, both coaches decided to part ways with these players. Nothing that I have ever heard is a good reason to end the USM association of Jasper Johnson (or the women's player who transferred to a Louisiana School) with USM. Having even two more experienced players would add a level of leadership, understanding, and composure that neither the men's team nor the women's team currently exibits. The excuse that "we're young" has worn out with me. The players are young, but why has USM "started over" in basketball two years in a row? Third, why are both teams looking to high school signees to improve their teams next year? Maybe you should go lecture Eustachy and McNelis. They seem to be the ones who place too much value on youth and talent and not enough value on age and experience. Fourth, I stated my expectation for the women's team. It was (and is) a reasonable expectation, given where USM is at present. Is it my prediction that you have issues with?

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Start with this statement:

"They've all said that players have to spend their first year adjusting to a different style of basketball and they have to learn to mature."

Your statement indicates that coaches believe that there is a maturation process that affects players' abilities to perform. The "problem" as you see it is that both basketball teams have little or no experience. Why is it that neither team has experience? Some players have left for personal reasons. Some have been discipline problems. Some have been injured. Neither McNelis nor Eustachy can control those departures, and players who have left for those reasons or who cannot play due to injury are not the fault of either coach.

However, there have been several players, both men and women, who have been "asked" (or told) to leave, and perhaps their departures cleared scholarships for high school recruits. Regardless, both coaches have made the decision to "go young." In making that decision, they are essentially relegating USM basketball to a lower status until they get the "right" mix of players to fit their systems.

I don't understand how someone can call themselves a "coach" when they have to have just the right group of players to have success. That's not coaching, that's recruiting. In basketball, Bobby Knight turned Texas Tech around in one year with the players that were there. In football, Mike Price took the players that were at UTEP and had success. Good coaches can coach players up to a higher level.

In Eustachy and McNelis, I don't see a lot of coaching up. What I see are coaches who must have enough talent on the team to offset their lack of coaching ability. At Iowa State, Eustachy won with Tim Floyd's talent (his Coach of the Year award is due to future NBA All-Stars Jamal Tinsley and Marcus Pfizer) and then lost with his own. McNelis didn't set the world on fire at Memphis.

Bottom line: if youth is USM's problem, then it's a problem created by the coaches. To run off any experienced player in the current state of affairs is unbelievable.