The story came out sometime during the Tulane Green Wave’s game against Houston on Friday. Coach Ed Conroy would not be retained following the conclusion of the Green Wave’s American Athletic Conference Tournament run.
Fans knew it, they told the coach the report had surfaced after his team fell behind by eight at the half. Tulane was just playing out the string against a team that had handled it well during the regular season and ending a nice tournament with an upset win over the UCF Knights.
This is March Madness though. Every tournament needs its Cinderella. And the Green Wave were not about to let their coach go down without a fight.
And following UConn’s crazy four-overtime victory over Cincinnati in the previous quarterfinal, Tulane was not about to let a chance to rock the apple cart go to waste.
Tulane made just two 3-pointers the entire game, but one could not have any bigger. Malik Morgan drove into the lane and sucked the defense in, feeding it to Cameron Reynolds to hit a 3-pointer and deliver Tulane another upset — a 72-69 win over Houston to advance to the American Athletic Conference Semifinals.
The Madness will continue in Orlando.
“I talked to our guys about it before the game, and what we have been saying all along, we are the madness,” Conroy said. “We can be a part of that. This is a new story for March Madness. I got axed because we’re down eight at the half. But I talked to the players about it before the game. . . . It’s almost like somebody’s putting something out there every 24 hours to try to distract this group. And, as you can see, that’s going to be a tougher job than they think. Because they’re pretty focused about what they’re doing.”
Conroy said he has not been told anything about his specific future, but the story is too juicy to to pass up. It makes for good pregame speeches, he joked during his press conference.
All he and anyone can do in this tournament is survive and advance. Tulane has been doing that with a mix of grit on defense and timely shooting on offense after dominating UCF in its opener.
This loss assuredly eliminates the Houston Cougars from NCAA Tournament consideration. A disappointing way for this team to end a successful season in the conference.
The next task could be the toughest yet for the Green Wave though.
In the last quarterfinal, the Memphis Tigers likely eliminated the Tulsa Golden Hurricane from NCAA Tournament consideration with an 89-67 romp.
Dedric Lawson scored 22 points to go with 12 rebounds, making up for a foul-ridden game for Shaq Goodwin. The Tigers were still too much for the Hurricane on the inside, posting a 36.4 percent offensive rebound rate. Memphis had 22 second-chance points, holding Tulsa’s Shaquille Harrison to 15 points on an icy 4-for-14 shooting.
This was a lot of the Memphis team Josh Pastner, on the hot seat himself, expected from the beginning of the season.
“The good Memphis team showed up today,” Pastner said. “We have been playing the last two, three weeks of the season, we have ben playing our best basketball of the year. Obviously when you’re making some of those shots, that opens a lot of things up. So I’m proud of our young men for that.”
The Tigers will play the Green Wave at approximately 5:15 p.m. to set the stage for a high-stakes American Athletic Conference Championship Game with teams needing that automatic bid to get into the NCAA Tournament.
