Home Stretch

As the 2024/25 season is on its way to the record books, the UT Arlington men's basketball team had an eventful two weeks in latter February, setting the stage for an interesting end to the regular season. The road will be uphill, but a successful 2-1 homestand was really needed.

The start came in a dramatic come-from-behind win over California Baptist. The Mavericks trailed by 17 points in the second half. That Lancer lead was built with five minutes gone after halftime. At the time, CBU was sitting solidly in third place in the Western Athletic Conference and it looked like the standings would be reflected in the score.

After trading three points, the lead was still 17 for the Lancers when UTA went on a 20-2 run to grab a brief lead. UTA needed only five minutes or so to do it as well. In these scenarios, I like to highlight someone who keyed the run, but so many Mavs contributed via steals, offensive rebounds, made shots and even free throws (which has been the Mavs Achilles Heel this year) that it is hard to name one person.

UTA had an opportunity to ice the game late, but struggled on two inbounds passes, then gave up two offensive rebounds before CBU got the basket with four seconds to tie it. Overtime was on the menu. After an initial basket from the Lancers, UTA scored on three straight possessions to take the lead for good. The 82-79 score was a little closer as CBU got a three at the buzzer. 

Two days later, the anticipated Grand Canyon home game occurred. I don't know what it is about this team or game, but like both regular season games last year, UTA had a lead past the halfway point of the second half after going to the locker room at halftime up one. But UTA couldn't close it out. There were some similarities to the beginning of this year's Western Athletic Conference season where the team just couldn't close out the opposition en route to a 0-4 start.

The Mavericks had a seven-point lead under seven minutes, a five-point lead near five minutes and a one-point lead under four. UTA scored only six points the remainder but even at the under three-minute point the Mavs only trailed 1. GCU shot lights out, finishing the game on an 11-5 run. In the last two minutes, UTA shot three shots from beyond the arc, missing all three, made the lone shot inside the arc and was 0-2 from the charity stripe. In that same span, GCU made all three shots taken and was 4-6 from the free throw line. In the end, UTA lost 82-75.

I've mentioned a few times about the feeling of unfairness from the referees last year. By the way, a great thread from WACHoopsNation publicly showed what I had heard. Last year's standout center confirmed the feeling. But, unlike all games involving close GCU wins in the WAC and the refs, no one left feeling gipped by the officials. The fouls were evenly distributed and actually were in UTA's favor until three late intentional fouls. UTA made the same amount of free throws and had four more attempts. 

But as I've mentioned previously, I don't need or want all that to be the same to feel the team was treated fairly. What I do need is both sides getting called for the same thing or non-calls being equal. That was not the case last year and at least in this game, that felt to be the case.

Then this past week, the only game on the schedule was a memorable one. It was a Saturday national telecast game in Arlington against regional rival Tarleton State.

Similar to the CBU game, UTA trailed by a large margin, 14 points with seven minutes remaining in the first half. A very slow offensive start was muted by a good defensive effort, but the offense was averaging a field goal every five minutes. Like we've seen a few times this season, the offense did find its grove, narrowing the difference to six at the half.

The Mavs gave up virtually the same number of points after halftime, but the offense was more consistent on their way to a 67-57 win. Another all-around game saw four Mavs in double figures and a rebounding margin in favor of the good guys, 38-35. A good sign was Graduate Senior forward Lance Ware was in foul trouble in the first half and Freshman center Cameron Jackson held his own in relief, scoring three points, but getting an impressive seven rebounds, second most in the game. He held his own defensively and was a big part of the effort to keep Tarleton under 30 points in each half.

I'm not sure what goes on with this team, but a full game of basketball is tough. However, the old saying goes a team doesn't win a game in the beginning, but sure can lose it. UTA has shown resiliency in overcoming these early deficits. If a team wins two-thirds of their games, they will label the season successful. 

The other factor that made the Texan game memorable was the Athletic Department put considerable effort to "pack the Park." UTA put forth a good crowd for the national game. The crowd energy was good when the game was rough early and really helped in that second half. They were waiting for something to happen and kept an energy despite that 14-point deficit in the first. The announced crowd of 5,183 brought energy and a missing component to the Mavs game.

It's been a long time since I've seen the building that full. UTA's last televised non-streaming service game came in 2020, which was still relatively fresh of fan discontentment from a few years earlier. The game still saw 3,309, which filled the lower bowl decently well and had a good atmosphere in the three-overtime loss to Texas State,

I keep a fairly extensive database that includes schedules, results, series history and attendance figures for all of UTA's team sports and update it nearly daily. I check the box score for the attendance number pretty quickly from August through May. While I know they set an attendance record as the goal, and were a little less than 1,300 off, this mark was the best tally since Scott Cross was fired and is significant because it might be a signal that the divide the Cross firing caused is healing.

Saturday was the largest crowd since the March 17, 2017 game in the NIT against California State-Bakersfield, which saw 6,336. The previous NIT game against Akron was also larger at 5,390. Saturday's Tarleton win was the largest regular season crowd since 6,107 witnessed the Mavericks defeat North Texas on December 3, 2015. 

I'm not going to say I was the first person who put it on the Sports Information Staff's radar, but I didn't see anyone else put it online when I responded to WACHoopsNation's tweet about a good crowd. Later, I saw the UTA Mavericks account mention the same thing. The crowd Saturday was the seventh largest in UTA history.

It is a good thing for Maverick Nation. In other posts, I have mentioned how volleyball, women's basketball, baseball and softball all have at least seven seasons in the last decade on the top ten attended seasons of all-time for that sport. The last decade includes the COVID year and usually are not on the list.

Volleyball has seven of the last ten (eight of the last 11) seasons in the top ten while women's basketball has nine of ten (ten of 11). This year is on pace for a top ten performance, despite a zero-fan game during bad weather. Baseball has had eight of the last ten seasons in the top ten while softball has nine of ten.

Only men's basketball hasn't seen that growth. The top three seasons were from the Kevin Hervey/Erick Neal era, with that special NIT run. Those three did happen within a decade. But the 1980/81 NIT team, as well as the year after which saw the team make it to the Southland Conference finals follow. College Park Center's opening and the two years following are also on the list. Only five of men's basketball's last ten season are in the top ten, clearly the lowest of the team sports. 

Now of course the firing of Cross was clearly a factor and we all know winning solves all problems, which hasn't been the norm since he left. Since Cross' ouster, last year's 20-win season didn't come close as the program needed a reset. A good tournament run, winning the last remaining home game and this large crowd could be the start.

Speaking of women's basketball, since the largest men's crowd in 2017, the women's team has had higher top-level games, eclipsing the top men's game four times in that time span. Another game from that same year, 2017, was above 5,000 for the ladies.

Those two points really shows the struggle the team has had to try and rebuild from the disaster of the post-Cross era. The good news is after Saturday's game, this year would currently be in eighth place. A crowd of just over 1,600 against Abilene Christian will secure a top ten spot. 1,895 will keep it in eighth place. Going really farfetched, 3,266 will be at or above 2,000 for the first time since 2017/18. 

Prior to the ACU game, UTA goes on the road against the hated school from GCU. They currently are second in the standings and are guaranteed a top two seed in the upcoming conference tournament. 

When the Wildcats visit on Saturday in the last home game for the Mavericks, UTA will look for the season sweep and a jump in the standings as ACU is currently tied for third with Cal Baptist, UTA's lone game next week. 

UTA is tied with Tarleton for fifth and the tiebreaker goes to the Mavs. All three games to end the season will be against teams above in the standings. Two of the three are ahead by only half a game. The Mavs have a great chance to end the season playing tournament quality games. Whether it will have an effect in Las Vegas remains to be seen.