I think our SOS really helped us improve as a team and got us ready for conference play. No matter what, kudos to this team for looking great the past couple of games. Excited to see if we can go to Texas and get two wins.
Nevertheless, I think we can all say our optimism about Marshall basketball has skyrocketed since the 0-6 start.
In the big picture, OOC schedule will "kill" MU chances for "major" post season, unless we win the league tourney. Or, if we win regular season I believe an automatic NIT bid comes with it. Otherwise, MU just cannot lose 2 games to a Colonial Con. team, JMU, and get killed by an average, .500 Morehead team. Losses to strong MAC teams, Ohio and Akron, aren't that bad, although OU just got killed by Bowling Green at home this week and Akron lost for first time in last 10 games or so. Akron and Northern Ill. are probably the best two MAC teams.
Remember a couple of years ago, the CUSA office was urging the conference schools to strengthen their OOC schedules? Idea was to try and get MORE TEAMS into the post season. Also, to go along with this philosophy, the idea was to get more conference teams to WIN some of those OOC games. Sadly, hasn't happened too much to date. Some of the teams with better CUSA records overall have played PATHETIC OOC schedules. D'Antoni is right in saying we played probably best OOC schedule. Would have been nice if we could have picked up another couple wins or so. Could have easily won the Vegas tourney since we lost close game to Grand Canyon at the very end.
Hopefully, we can win several more than we lose in remaining conference games. If we end up overall with 17 to 19 wins by end of season, we could hopefully end up in CBI or other post season tourney. This would say volumes about improvement under DD in year two to our fan base, the general public, and to future recruits!! GO HERD!!!!!
