First Season Disappointments

I'm not certain a 5-8 non-conference record for the 2022/23 UT Arlington men's basketball season was how the team and fans envisioned the return to the Western Athletic Conference. Probably more devastating is when you factor out the meaningless non-Division I games, UTA is a paltry 2-8.

That's important because only D-I games count in any ranking, NET, RPI, etc. This year, the WAC is seeding it conference tournament based more on the overall resume, rather than just the conference record. UTA has been near the bottom, landing in last place for most of the last month.

Probably the most frustrating thing about that is this team has shown promise, but just can't get it into a higher gear.

For the sake of this entry, I'm not going to go into too much detail of the season's games, or in some cases any for the non-DI games. They raise no excitement for me or fans in general. It might be nice to players to face different faces, but they aren't much better than scrimmages. 

As the first season, non-conference, is over, I'll look ahead to the second season of conference play.

Return of the WAC

Like Mark Morrison sang (using a small play on words), the Sun Belt is breaking up with the UT Arlington Athletic Department, prompting UTA to rejoin a familiar conference, which contains some familiar faces. 

How'd we get here? Plain and simple. UTA lacks a football program. This move was not initiated by UTA, but rather by discontent within the Sun Belt Conference. As the Sun Belt changed leadership and direction, they elected to focus their strategy on growing revenue through football. 

Of course, that's the one thing, the one, that UTA in its current form could not help with in accomplishing.