Tulane Men Fall for 2nd Straight Home Loss, UNT Prevails 71-63
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The Tulane men’s basketball team kept up its issues with accurate shooting, as the Green Wave fell to North Texas 71-63 before 1,307 fans in Fogelman arena. It was the second straight American Conference loss for the Wave, both of which came at home. Tulane drops to 12-6 on the year, 3-2 in league play. North Texas improves to 11-7 on the season, 2-3 in the AAC.
The game was a physical one from start to finish. North Texas played a tight man-to-man to start the game, which looked to get the Green Wave out of any offensive rhythm.
"I thought their physicality really bothered us," Hunter lamented. "We knew they were a really good defensive team. (However) we had wide open shots and couldn't make those shots. We couldn't get the offensive rebounds, things we were doing well before this week."
"We've got good teams in our league that play physical," Hunter pointed out.
First Half: UNT 35 - Tulane 30
The Green Wave continues its year-long bug-a-boo of not being able to find the bottom of the bucket or get the rebound. In the first 20-minutes of play, Tulane hit 31% of its shots from the field, sinking only 9-of-their-29 shots on goal, What kept TU in the game, were two factors: three-pointers and the Tulane defense.
The Wave made seven shots from beyond the arc, making 44%. Meanwhile, the TU defense forced North Texas into eight first-half turnovers.
The Mean Green absolutely owned the rebound game in half #1, as North Texas pulled down 22-boards. The Green Wave could only manage ten.
For the second game in a row, forward Tyler Ringgold got into early foul trouble limiting his first half participation. The sophomore picked up his third fouled with just over 5-and-a-half minutes left on the clock in period one.
Final: North Texas 71 - Tulane 63
Even though the Wave was able to slice the UNT lead to just two with 5:26 to go in the game, missing open shots and not getting the rebounds came back to bite Tulane on the proverbial buttocks. The Green Wave only took four shots from the field after that point, only hitting a Rowan Brumbaugh layup. Meanwhile, North Texas went to the free throw line and made good on the freebies, hitting 8-of-11 down the stretch along with a layup and a three-pointer.
Field goal shooting continued to be the Green Wave downfall in the second half. After hitting right at 31% in the first period, Tulane was half-a-tick better in the last 20-minutes at 31.6%.
Junior guard Rowan Brumbaugh lead the Wave with 22-points on the afternoon, going 6-of-15 from the field, 8-for-9 at the charity stripe. The only other Greenie in double-digits was guard Curtis Williams, Jr., who scored 15, all of his points coming from beyond the three-point line.
"Hats off to them (North Texas)," Williams said after the game. "They played really well today, but I don't think it was them. It was really us. We beat ourselves. Outside of the offensive glass (where UNT pulled down 17-offensive rebounds), it wasn't them. It was us."
"We were missing wide open shots," Hunter told us. "(Before this week) we were making those shots. Now we're missing those shots. We just have to figure ourselves out a little bit, get through this little bad patch."
Tulane now hits the road for a pair of American Conference games. First up, a rematch with high-flying Florida Atlantic on Wednesday night in Boca Raton. The Green Wave held the Owls to one of its lowest offensive outputs in Fogelman earlier this month in a three-point victory. Then, it's off to one of the top teams in the American, Charlotte, on Sunday, January 25th
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.