There is no crime in getting blown-out by a nationally ranked Houston team, a bottom-dweller A10 team, a mid-major program like Oakland that is regularly in the tournament, and going to triple OT to a KenPom #228 ranked Evansville team...if it was year one or two of rebuilding the program.

But it is not year one or year two. It is year 5 (year 4 if you don't want to count COVID).

Many will feel better about beating-up on powerhouses like Jarvis Christian, St. Thomas, and Incarnate Ward at home and building confidence going into conference play but that is not the competition this team needs to beat.

I agree w/ most here who believe the program is progressing compared to the exodus of many years ago but unfortunately progressing at glacier-like speeds while the world around the program is progressing at much faster rates. Rice played in postseason basketball in 2004, 2005, 2012, and 2017 but team has shown nothing after a bunch of games to be in position to compete for any postseason alphabet soup tournament let alone a NCAA berth which should be the goal by year 5. Progression may be there but like FB, world is moving faster than Rice...so progress may be a gross positive in a Rice-only vacuum but a net negative when compared to others.

(11-25-2021 12:44 AM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  At least I have a degree from a great university, as opposed to pretending I belong, after attending a glorified community college.

Now, the team should get some momentum with a home heavy schedule, and a relatively easy set of opponents.

Thanks for reaffirming your Ignore status

Defensive ranking down to 290 on KenPom, 301 on Bart Torvik. Even with the Houston debacle, we're ranked top 75 in offensive efficiency by both KP and BT. If we were just average on defense, something in the 150-175 rank, we'd likely be 6-1. That's the most frustrating part, for me. We don't even need to be good defensively. When Rhoades won 23 games in his last year, our defense ranked 219. That's not good, but because our offense was top-125, it was decent enough. Now we have what's statistically the second most efficient scoring attack in CUSA (though with out flaws that'll probably be closer to 4th or so by the year's end), and we can't get our defense even to a below average level, which would likely be enough to make us legitimate contenders in CUSA.

I don't feel like making a new thread but Rice finally is back home tomorrow to host a decent Texas State game. It's probably our last chance to post a decent NC win, since the four games after that are really against bad teams/non D1 teams. And then we are at Texas.

Hopefully being at home will be a difference maker, as we've only had 2 home games in our first 7 games so far.

Most of the other teams from the Gulf Coast tournament have played since last week's tournament. And most seem to be winning, although Fordham had to go to double overtime to win at Central Connecticut State. Evansville got a road win at another team that didn't seem great.