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UTEP goes down at home to New Orleans, who a few years ago was on the verge of giving up basketball, or at least dropping to D2.

Sorry CUSA

Ouch. Yep, we're going to need to win the conference tournament.

(12-16-2013 11:56 PM)JeffUAB Wrote:  Ouch. Yep, we're going to need to win the conference tournament.

That's not looking to be a tough task.

(12-17-2013 12:01 AM)Marathon Blazer Wrote:  

(12-16-2013 11:56 PM)JeffUAB Wrote:  Ouch. Yep, we're going to need to win the conference tournament.

That's not looking to be a tough task.

Haha. Good point. It's just so easy to get knocked out in a tournament environment by a team that you should beat. Guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

UTEP was favored by 23.

Well...you knew this season was going to be a disaster for them when the superstar player their team was built around transferred out during summer workouts.

I thought UTEP would be one of the six contenders for the regular season title. Might need to bump that number down to five now.

(12-17-2013 09:43 AM)HSV_BLAZER Wrote:  I thought UTEP would be one of the six contenders for the regular season title. Might need to bump that number down to five now.

I think you can bump it down to 3, mayyyyybe 4.

Right now, IMO, UAB, Charlotte, USM, and maybe MT are the contenders.

I'd put UAB as the favorite since you don't have any shitastic losses to schools like College of Charleston or Davidson or a 30 point defeat like USM.

That 21 point loss to Temple was pretty bad. I mean, not UNO bad.

I'm not counting La Tech out yet, but they are probably a lot like MTSU. Both are teams that won't be able to duplicate last year's success in a new conference.

The Temple loss was only bad by margin of victory, not by opponent.

A loss is a loss no matter if its by 1 or 101, its the number and qualities of the win that carry more weights. imo..

The Temple loss was OK in retrospect, but we can't afford a slip up like that on the road (I'm assuming we will get morbidly obese on our diet of upcoming cupcakes at home) against one of our conference bretheren, outside of possibly MTSU/Charlotte/the like..

From KenPom.com -

Biggest upsets from 12/13/13 to 12/19/13

1. New Orleans 71, UTEP 69, Monday. (2%) Whenever I see an upset of this magnitude, I am forced to wonder if there’s something wrong with the ratings that feed the predictions. New Orleans returned to Division I last season after a two-year hiatus and went 8-18, which included four wins over teams outside of Division I, zero road wins, and their best victory was over the 263rd ranked team on this site. They had played four games against D-I teams this season and lost them all by double-digits. But they actually hung around with LSU for a half and weren’t embarrassing against Minnesota. Only time will tell if this is truly the shocking win the computer thinks it is.

Halftime score: LSU 32 - New Orleans 28. Final score: LSU 81 - New Orleans 54.