BURN THE HORSE
SMU Coach Matt Doherty gave a nice interview to Pony Fans recently. You can find it here:http://www.ponyfans.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49461
Here's a couple of interesting quotes. First on his nonconference schedule, which includes UALR as the opening game on Nov. 12.
“I think if I had to do it over again, I probably would have had the schedule like this from the beginning. Because I think when you’re building a program, you need wins. And then you get wins, and then recruits come, and then the fans come and then all of a sudden you can improve your schedule. I think from the beginning we’ve played some teams, whether it be a UNLV or Texas A&M, home-and-home, or South Florida, home-and- home, that maybe we should have just tried to win games from the beginning. … I probably didn’t use that formula and that’s probably one of the regrets I do have. I think we’d be a little bit further along now had we done that in years one and two, versus year five.”
And he's also talking about the three players yet to be cleared by the NCAA. All three were very solid recruits.
Especially in light of the NCAA has not cleared Ricmonds Vilde or Leslee Smith. We recruited those guys to be that forward that can rebound and score, kind of like Mouhammad did for us. They’re both terrific players and would be in my probably top six rotation but the NCAA hasn’t cleared them because of international transcripts. So that’s probably the biggest void that we’ll have right now. We have three international players that the NCAA hasn’t cleared yet. Two are forwards, Vilde and Smith, and [guard] Aliaksei Patsevich. … That’s for different reasons. Amatuerism reasons.”
