Tulane Green Wave Basketball Coach Has Harsh Words for Team’s Maturity Level

The Tulane Green Wave had a huge opportunity when they took the floor in their previous game against the East Carolina Pirates.

They had a chance to clinch a top four spot in the American Athletic Conference standings, which would mean a double-bye in the tournament next week into the quarterfinals.

That is a massive advantage to hold heading into the conference tournament having to only win three games to take home the championship instead of four or five.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be on Thursday night.

Tulane headed on the road to play in Greenville at Williams Arena, which has been full of terrible memories for head coach Ron Hunter.

The Green Wave were 0-6 when traveling to face East Carolina; now they are 0-7 after losing 73-64 and failing to clinch a top-four spot in the standings.

They were out of the game early, going down by 17 points in the first 5:30 of the game and never being able to climb out of the hole.

Momentum-changing opportunities were there for Tulane but they were never able to take advantage. As a result, the Pirates never truly felt pressure or sweat too much, being able to cruise to the finish line and keeping their own hopes for a double-bye alive.

“There were four possessions in the second half where we had the ball on breaks and couldn’t finish,” Hunter said via Guerry Smith of NOLA.com. “At some point we’ll be the older team where we know how to get through that, but we just didn’t handle the pressure well enough.”

As the case has been throughout the campaign, it was a matter of experience, being the difference.

There are four seniors in the starting lineup for East Carolina. The Green Wave don’t have a single senior on their roster and are lacking players who even had extensive Division I experience coming into the season.

“This is like Wichita State with such a great environment, and we’re not mature enough that we can handle this,” Hunter said. “All I kept saying was you can’t come to East Carolina and get off to a bad start.”

That is exactly what Tulane did, as they were overwhelmed early by a veteran-laden Pirates squad.

Now, the pressure will be on the team to defeat the UAB Blazers in their regular season finale on Sunday. They were defeated handily in the first matchup of the season, losing 81-69 on the road.

If they do not win that game, they will need the Florida Atlantic Owls to defeat East Carolina, also on Sunday afternoon, to clinch the top four seed.

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