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Tip-off in just under 30 minutes. GO "Bear Backers!"

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Sugarbears having a rough go of it to start SLC play...

5:36 left in 1st

UCA 13
TA&M-CC 29

2:50 left in 1st

UCA 16
CC 37

Corpus Christi is 6-10 from 3...we are 0-3

Halftime

UCA 20
CC 44

CC is 7-12 from 3 and we are still 0-3.

Come on Sugarbear!

FINAL

UCA 65
CC 86

1st SLC game for most if these girls...they will only get better!

Herbert's double-double streak was also snapped today. She finished with 15 pts and 9 rbs.

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Conference play on the road...never easy...they will get their composure back....

whew, that sounded like a really bad trip. Any ideas what happened? Are we not as improved as we thought we were? Is the easy schedule going to come back to haunt us?

I agree with Josh. This was the first conference game for most of the girls, but I don't it is going to be a long conference season. All they have to do is get back on the drawing board and get ready for Stephen F. Austin on Wednesday night at 7 at the Farris Center! Looking to seeing many of you there.

They fell behind by 20 in first half but actually played a great 2nd half. I think this team is going to bounce back.

I'm guessing the NAIA schedule is not paying off...I'll guess we'll have to see

To me, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in college basketball. You really don't need 13 or 14 solid non-conference games to "get ready" for conference season.

It has a lot more to do with the opponent than the schedule.

I think the NAIA games pay off, especially when you're meshing a new team together, because it allows you to taste some success and you're not just down and out from the very beginning. If you come out and lose your first seven games, it's a lot easier for people to start mailing it in than it is to pull it together and suddenly start pulling wins out.

A baby's gotta eat, but that doesn't mean you feed it a steak to get it ready for the rest of its life.

You get 13-14 non-conference games, and if four are against NAIA cupcakes that leaves you with 9-10 games against Division I opponents. If you don't figure out what you need to in that many games, you're probably not going to get it anyway. I'd gladly take the tradeoff of getting four wins, feeling good about yourself and all that.

And, those games allow you to work full speed on some different sets and mix different lineups and all that. And getting different sets of people on the floor together and having some fun builds chemistry, which over the course of the season is probably more important than a couple more tough games.

They're basically your preseason games, just played in the regular season. If you've been playing basketball your whole life (and between high school and AAU, freshmen come in a lot more seasoned than they did 20-25 years ago), you're not going to learn just a whole ton in 13 games that you won't in 9.

It's incredible to me that this even comes up after one conference game. Here's a question nobody has raised ...

Is a Texas A&M-Corpus Christi team with 11 juniors and seniors, a couple of preseason all-conference players, six players 6-foot or taller and playing on its home floor just a better team than the Sugar Bears?

Is that dumb to give credit to the opponent instead of looking for somewhere to place blame? Sometimes teams are just flat-out better. And Corpus is flat-out better.

Do Air Force, Alabama, Colorado State and Houston need to schedule tougher? Corpus has beaten all of them this year, too.

The Sugar Bears could have played UConn 13 times and it wouldn't have equaled a win over Corpus. I don't think playing Southern, UT-Martin, UAPB and Louisiana-Lafayette really makes you 22 points better than playing Ecclesia, Central Methodist, Wiley and Texas College.

Sometimes, other teams are just going to be more talented. That was the case yesterday. The plan is for that to be the case less and less each season.

I agree with you but I also think you need to mix in a couple of smaller D1 schools or even D2 schools in there because the speed of the game is much different.

Your right, this team does need to mesh and learn to play with each other but why can't they do it against D2 teams that somewhat resemble the speed they will be playing at.

According to your philosophy, playing at the NAIA level is the same as playing at the D1 level. If that's the case then everyone would be playing D1 basketball.

Fixed that for you.

There's not a single thing in what I said that should lead anybody to believe I was saying NAIA = NCAA Division 1. I don't even know how you came to that conclusion.

I'll give you a summarized version that might make more sense.

A few NAIA games (typically) aren't bad for the reasons I previously mentioned – gives you a chance to (typically) have some success and work on a lot of different things, get some chemistry going and all that.

Obviously you don't want to schedule 13 cupcakes because then you don't ever challenge yourself, but a few sprinkled in isn't going to do any damage.

You talk about mixing in a couple smaller D1 or D2 schools because the speed of the game is much different ... If you have a 13-game non-conference schedule and four are against NAIAs, that means 9 are against D1 teams. That's mixing some in.

Do you really think it takes until the 10th game for the switch to flip, the light to come on and then suddenly the adjustment to the speed of the game takes place? What do you get out of the 10th that you don't in the 9th as far as knowing about the speed of the game? If your players haven't figured out after nine games that things are moving a little faster, then you've got problems far deeper than scheduling.

Maybe you do learn a couple things in 13 games against D1 competition that you wouldn't in 9 (though it's more advanced than "speed of the game") ... but you definitely learn some things playing weaker competition than you wouldn't if you make your schedule too tough.

And I still don't know how you gathered I was saying playing at the NAIA level is the same as playing at the D1 level. I'd like to get an explanation on that.