SCOUTING THE MUSTANGS SMU enters play on Monday with a 15-13 overall record and a 6-9 mark in American Athletic Conference play after falling to UCF 63-37 on Saturday. The loss snapped a 2-game winning streak for the Mustangs.
As a team, the Mustangs average 59.0 points per game, while allowing opponents to score 59.2. SMU shoots 36.9 percent from the field and 26.0 from beyond the 3-point line while allowing opponents to shoot 35.2 percent and 31.9 percent respectively.
Individually, the Mustangs are led offensively by a pair of players who average double-figure scoring. Alicia Froling contributes 14.2 points per game, while McKenzie Adams adds 11.9. Froling has led the team with 200 rebounds this season, a pace of 10.5 rebounds per game, to average a double-double per contest.
TOP PERFORMERS
Houston: The Cougars had just one player reach double-figures in points in the contest. Senior Jacqueline Blake led the team with 18 points, including a 4-of-6 mark from beyond the 3-point line. On the glass, sophomore Serithia Hawkins recorded her third-consecutive double-figure rebound game, leading all players with 13.
SMU: The Mustangs had three players score in double-digits, including a game-high 20 from Morgan Bolton. Bolton connected on her first six 3-point attempts en route to leading all scorers on her senior night. McKenzie Adams finished second on the team with 12 points, while Dai’ja Thomas added 10. Alicia Froling paced the Mustangs on the glass with nine rebounds to go along with nine points.
NEWS AND NOTES
With the Cougars’ loss and Tulsa’s win over Cincinnati, the Cougars hold the No. 10 seed heading into the American Athletic Conference Championship.
Valid opinion and its hard for me to go against your thinking.
I will say this in defense of Hughey, he brought in a nice class last year and has a top 100 national recruit coming in next year. Man can recruit.
This team’s best players are very young. Unlike the men, it takes longer to improve due to all athletes on the women’s side staying a full 4 years, or at least the best ones do. When Hughey took over, he was left nothing as the program was in even worse shape than the men were when Sampson took over.
The team did show improvement this year as they equaled the total amount of wins they’ve had in the American to date (4) and they were better out of conference. They still aren’t good and it was disconcerting at times to see this team collapse in the 2nd half so often.
I’m more in the camp of giving him one more year as that will give him a full 4 years and 3 recruiting cycles. If they do, Hughey needs to get the team to at least 5th or 6th in conference though. It also allows you, if it comes to it, to make a change with the new arena opening up and the pool of candidates should be higher quality because of that.
I can see the decision makers agreeing with you, especially your last point.
Imo, giving the current HC another year is just delaying the inevitable. Personally, I have seen
enough data points to think that the change should occur at the end of this season.
