Tulane Men Look to Stretch their AAC Record to 3-0 at UTSA
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The Tulane men's basketball team has started 2025-26 on a tear. The Green Wave stands at 11-4 for the season, 2-0 in American Conference play. Saturday afternoon, Tulane coach Ron Hunter's troops are in Texas to play the bottom of the AAC barrel, Texas-San Antonio. The Road Runners are on an eight-game skid standing at 4-11 on the year, losing all three of their AAC games.
Despite UTSA's lack of victories, Hunter knows a road conference game is still just that: an American Conference game on another team's court.
"Regardless of the record, or who you play, it's a long conference season," Hunter told the media Friday. "To fight for a championship, you've got to get as many road wins as you can get. They're (UTSA) going to have their backs against the wall."
The Green Wave has been able to claim victories in each of its first two American Conference games. With a win Saturday afternoon in San Antonio, the Wave will open the season with three straight conference victories, something that hasn't happened since the 1996-97 season.
Hunter believes his team excelling on the defensive side of the ball has led Tulane to where it stands now.
"One of the things I'm excited about," Hunter said, "is our defense playing at such a high level. If we continue to do that, it helps you, (especially) on the road."
Tulane is sitting in the fourth spot in the American in forcing their opponents to turnover the ball, garnering 12.3-turnovers per game.
"What we've just got to do is play 40-minutes of great defense and make shots," Hunter explained when talking about his team's modus operandi for this season. "We understand what our formula for winning is: if we take care of the ball and play at our pace regardless of what the other teams do, we have a chance of winning every night."
To wit, last time out, the Green Wave held a high-flying Florida Atlantic team to its second lowest offensive output of the season, holding FAU to only 66-points. The Owls had cleared the century mark in three of their previous five games. With that victory, Hunter won his 100-game as coach of the Tulane Green Wave, something he does not take for granted.
"Three different schools, we've won 100-games (or more)," Hunter said when we asked him how it felt. "The consistency, the great staff I have, it's a blessing. I love doing it here (at Tulane), because 80% of the people said I shouldn't take this job, (but) all I care about is getting 101."
Tulane and UTSA match up Saturday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. from the Convocation Center on the Texas-San Antonio campus. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+ and on The Ticket 106.7.
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.