DALLAS — Occasionally practice habits pay off with more playing time. SMU's Tyreek Smith discovered that against Tulane. What he did with it, though, may get him another start Sunday against Alabama-Birmingham.
Smith, a senior transfer, hasn't started a game all year. That didn't seem to bother his practices. It's what Mustangs coach Rob Lanier saw and started him against Tulane last week. The result the payoff for everybody was an 80-76 win over the Green Wave, Smith scoring a career-high 16 points. It broke a two-game losing streak.
"He earned it the way he's practiced, the way he's played," Lanier said. "He wanted to start so bad coming here but Keon (Ambrose-Hylton) beat him out. He handled that well. He got his start. He got a career high today and he rebounded the ball well and had a presence and then Keon had an opportunity to handle it a certain way, and he did too. He had a career high in rebounds off the bench in 19 minutes. So it says a lot about those two."
Lanier notices these types of things. At a point of the season where coaches are wanting to settle on rotations before the critical February stretch run, figuring out new rotations is critical. It often leads to. success in March.
The Ponies will need that coming up to a critical portion of the season where they'll be playing some of the best teams in the AAC and looking to avenge previous losses. SMU gets Memphis and North Texas at Moody Coliseum, which should help. Maybe now Lanier discovered something new that worked combined with finding a needed ingredient.
"We talked the last two days about the difference between playing with passion versus emotion," Lanier said. "Emotion is very fleeting, passion is something that's sustainable. It's a commitment, there's conviction, something you really believe in, something you really cherish that you're trying to protect. I'm looking for that and we didn't have that on Sunday.
"We didn't play with great passion. We played like we were cool, like we've been playing hard, we're going to go on the road, that team hadn't won in a while, we're gonna we're going to come out on top. Instead of making it about us and our passion for what it is this journey is that we're trying to trying to accomplish and we've got to find that.
"We showed some of that tonight and that's why the numbers cannot necessarily favor us but the outcome can because we did band together and find a way and that's a good indicator for us."
The Mustangs Alabama-Birmingham on Sunday at 5 p.m. in Moody Coliseum. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 and fuboTV. You can listen to the game in Dallas on KAAM-AM 770.
PONY EXPRESS:
SMU GETS SHOT AT WIN AGAINST UNT, BUT FALL SHORT IN CRUCIAL CONFERENCE SHOWDOWN
MUSTANGS LOSE KEY PROTECTOR FOR PRESTON STONE
PONIES FINALLY FIND MISSING INGREDIENT NEEDED TO BECOME ELITE TEAM
SLOW START BY TEMPLE MAY HAVE CAUSED MUSTANGS TO RELAX, ALLOW OWLS BACK IN GAME
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