Mavericks to Play in CPC's Biggest Week

Happy post #100!

With that out of the way, I'll dive into a topic that I rarely venture into for the 100th. Regular readers know I tread carefully into ranking subjective material. For example, rather than say the 1981 UT Arlington Men's Basketball team was the most talented ever, which is my opinion, I'd say they were one of the greatest, allowing others to their opinion of which is the greatest. I know people like lists, especially top ten, but I leave that for others to decide, at least for now.

That said, there are the slam dunks, which only the fringe can deny, like for example to 1967 football team achieved the greatest success, but those are few and far between. I think today's topic qualifies.

In its brief history, CPC has seen some big games, but there has not been the back-to-back games that have the meaning of this week. UTA sits in fourth in the Sun Belt Conference standings at 8-5. Louisiana-Monroe is a half game ahead at 9-5 and Louisiana-Lafayette is a game ahead of them at 10-4. Both teams beat UTA on their home court. The Mavericks were in the middle of a four-game losing streak and five losses in six games, most of that triggered by the loss of Kevin Hervey.

The Inexplicable Fall

A lot has changed since this post, where I explained that UT Arlington may never had had this level of success. The men are on a three-game slide, and have lost four outof five. The women are struggling unexpectedly as well, losing five out of six, with a four-game skid in the mix.

I'll start with the men, where there's an obvious reason, but I think the slide is beyond that.

A deep pit in my stomach occurred when I found out sophomore Kevin Hervey had "tweaked" his knee in warm-ups prior to the Arkansas State game. As a guy who has torn an ACL before, I knew exactly what tweaked can lead to. Sure enough, the forefront of the Mavericks rise was out for the season.