NEW ORLEANS — Tulane head basketball coach Ron hunter calls Saturday’s 75-66 loss to SMU his team’s worst performance in “about a month and a half now.”
The Green Wave only turned the ball over 9 times but shot just 37 percent from the field.
Tulane forced 16 turnovers but surrendered 15 three-pointers to the Mustangs, two in the final minute and a half of regulation.
“Their shots were timely and they didn’t panic. A lot of times when we can get a team to panic. That’s you have 7 seniors and probably the best player in the league in Kendrick Davis, they didn’t panic. They made all timely jump shots. I thought 60% of them were hard-challenged shots and the other 40 we could have done a better job with,” says Tulane head basketball coach Ron hunter.”
Tulane is back on the road tomorrow against an identical 11-5 UCF team whose top 5 performers are upperclassmen.
The Green Wave is 2-1 in road conference games and a different team when they take the court in a hostile environment.
“I think that we get that us against the world mentality, that chip on our shoulder. The crowd is big, you’ve got 8-9,000 people chanting against you, and we kind of bring it all together. I think when we get home, we relax. That intensity falls off a little bit and you’ve got mom, dad, girlfriend, and everything else. As a young team, we’ve got to kind of balance that and figure that out,” says Hunter.
Tip-off is set for 1 p.m.