Tulane's Ron Hunter Must Be Part Cat
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Come on, admit it.
You didn't think Tulane could stop its five-game losing streak in Memphis on Sunday. Maybe you were watching the game on ESPN2, but you were ready for the worst.
Add to that, the Green Wave has a seven-day stretch between this American Conference road game against year-in, year-out leader Memphis and the next Tulane game, which would be at home against Wichita State on Sunday, February 8th.
That's a week between games. I know what some of you were thinking: it would be the perfect time to move on from Ron Hunter as coach of the Tulane men's basketball program.
After all, the Green Wave has produced only two winning seasons in Hunter's previous six. Since January 14th in the year of our Lord 2026, in the midst of five straight AAC losses, the Wave had not shown the promise Hunter had been predicting.
Enter, Tulane Visiting Memphis.
Hunter's troops were short-handed before the game ever got underway, as sophomore guard KJ Greene was ruled out with flu-like symptoms, as reported by NOLA.com's Guerry Smith. That would force Rowan Brumbaugh and Asher Woods to play the lion's share of minutes in this one. That they did, as the two never checked out of the game, playing all 40-minutes. No one else on either team did that.
Here it is, game's end. Memphis' all-everything guard Dug McDaniel had just hit a game-tying jumper with 14-seconds remaining. Brumbaugh, already leading everyone on both teams in the number of points scored, found an extra bounce in his step at the end. Taking the inbounds pass, the preseason American Conference player of the year dribbled the ball the length of the court and laid the ball up with his right hand with six second remaining for what would be the game-winning points in a 78-76 thriller in the FedEx Forum.
Ron Hunter Does It Again.
You could feel the eyes of the wolves watching from afar as the last embers of the Ron Hunter campfire were fading before this game.
The vultures were swirling, as rumblings calling for his dismissal were being shared on the Internets leading up to the Sunday contest against Memphis.
Nope.
Once again, as Hunter seems to have done before, he found a way to win, to get his players to believe.
Before Sunday, this team had a hard time figuring out how to play Hunter's matchup defense, allowing easy slashes from the wing and across the court.
Prior to Memphis, his players couldn't make baskets to save their coach's skin, shooting 40.8% from the field during that five-game skid mentioned earlier.
Then Sunday happened. Against the Tigers, who admittedly are in the midst of a very non-Memphis-like season, the Green Wave hit 50% of their field goals, something they hadn't done since a November 28th victory over Nicholls State.
As we told you above, the Wave was already short-handed, and became even shorter-handeder (we know that's not a word) when three Greenies fouled out of the game in the 2nd half. Yet, Tulane still held the Tigers to only 36% from the field including a paltry 4-of-20 from beyond the arc.
Memphis is known for forcing turnovers this season. The Green Wave gave up the ball 13 times. They also took away 11 from the Tigers, including the most important one when Tyler Ringgold, playing with four fouls, knocked the ball away from the aforementioned McDaniel about 20-feet from the Tigers' basket and dove on the floor to possess the ball as time ran out.
I Had My Doubts Going in to Sunday
Yep. I was one of them.
I already had written an op-ed, wondering if it was time to start anew without Ron Hunter. The piece was ready to go out when Memphis beat Tulane. When...
In that editorial, I admitted Hunter is a very likable, easy to get along with person, that I enjoy his give-and-take after both wins and losses, that he is always making time to talk to us media before a game and makes us a priority afterwards. He does the little things, like making his players available after a loss, helping his young men learn how to handle things after a defeat, a life lesson that proves the kind of teacher Hunter is.
But a six-game skid, which is what it would have been with a Memphis loss, would have been a signal. A signal that was unavoidable: that it was time to think about going in another direction.
Instead, this Memphis victory could be the turning point for this Tulane team. Riding the backs of the Brumbaugh/Woods tandem is a pretty secure ride. What those two showed on Sunday is something that can carry this team a very long way.
I like Ron Hunter. I hope he is successful and his teams at Tulane thrive.
I have never been happier to be wrong about Tulane possibly moving on from a coach.
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.