Watch Out C-USA!

The historians among you can relate to a period of American history called the Era of Good Feelings. Tulane basketball is sort of right there, in that happy spot right, now.

No one, and I mean no one (me included), is unhappy with Dave Dickerson. Coach took over a real, real mess two years ago: eight conference wins combined in the previous two years, a really demoralized fan base, then a campus wrecked by Katrina. And now Coach is our modern day James Monroe!

And he’s made linear progress every month. Tulane has started to win more conference games than they lose, won a first round conference tournament game last year, have a real good chance to advance a round deeper this year. Faced with a chance to put a real capstone on the regular season, Tulane went on the road, as a seven point ‘dog, to play a classy mid-major program in UAB- and won the game. It was the biggest game of Dickinson’s tenure- and they went out and got it.

So, they move forward with, more importantly, all expectation to move forward again. They lose three seniors- but Chris Moore is one of the endless sized-challenged guys that attend Tulane in bunches who can’t score when faced with a real Division 1 perimeter defender. Andrew Garcia provided a sort of mid-major quality depth on occasion; but there were more than a few nights where he was simply overmatched.

The point is that the on-court losses, outside of that admittedly important “inside the locker room presence”, aren’t dramatic- which suggests the Wave might be a mere good recruiting class away. Or maybe even one new quality front court player with size- although yes, you could argue any class with a quality front court player in C-USA has a certain quality to it.

It is heartening. One frustration with the Finney era is that there was no excuse for it. You can make a logical argument that football is hopeless at Tulane given the current environment- but Tulane basketball has won, has filled their building, has been successful in the post-season, and has been flat out, well, fun! They’ll be a first division pick in the League next year- and with an incoming productive player in the front court, another off the bench, they could play in the NIT next year.