Is This It For Mike Dunleavy at Tulane, and How ECU and Tulane are Still Struggling To Make the Jump From C-USA to the American

Following their 67-59 loss to now 1-11 Alabama A&M on Saturday, Tulane fans seemed to of had enough of the Mike Dunleavy experiment. Tulane stands at 4-8 on the year with losses to extremely inferior competition like Alabama A&M, Townson, South Alabama, Southeast Louisiana, and Georgia State.

Mike Dunleavy's journey to Tulane was a difficult one to understand. Dunleavy has held multiple coaching jobs in the NBA including head coaching stints with the Lakers, Clippers, Trail Blazers, and Bucks and he was the 1999 NBA Coach of the Year. Dunleavy, now 64, is at his first ever college coaching job, with really no ties to the university at all.

Dunleavy has compiled a career record of 24-50 as the Green Wave's Head Coach. In his first year, he was thrown into a nearly impossible situation, which ended in a 6-25 first year record, but believe it or not, recruiting has not been that big of a problem. Dunleavy has out recruited Houston and Kalvin Sampson via the player rating on 247Sports.com, but Houston is a top 20 team in the nation, while Tulane ranks 265th in the nation on Kenpom and has never finished better than 10th in the AAC.

Obviously, this is only year three of Dunleavy and to be honest, he did a solid job last year going 14-18 with a team that probably didn't have the talent to win 14 games, but this year has been the exact opposite. Tulane is loosing to teams that everyone else in the conference is beating by 20. There is no reason to lose to South Alabama by 21. Or Townson by 18. Or Winless Alabama A&M by 8. Tulane will not win more than a couple conference games this year, so it is looking like another 6 or 7 win season for Dunleavy. So, this may turn into a situation of where Dunleavy didn't have the players to win 20+ games a year, but at some point you can't keep a coach that has a career winning percentage of under 30% at your school after three years. I would compare it to the Browns bringing back Hue Jackson after going 1-31 in two seasons, Tulane knew they probably weren't going to compete anytime soon in the American, but eventually to many losses stack up. Which brings up the question why has Tulane never been able to take that step from Conference USA to the American.

Tulane and their counter-part East Carolina have had a very hard time competing in the basketball, the sport that makes the second most revenue for the school. It's been hard to understand because teams like Houston and Tulsa also came from Conference USA, but have both benefited from the jump and have made the NCAA Tournament. Tulane and ECU joined the American in 2014, and there is still a huge gap between everyone else (expect USF) and these two in basketball. Both of these schools have never finished better than 10th in the AAC.

For ECU, recruiting has been the main issue. Here are there team recruiting rankings since they have joined the American.

2015: 11th

2016: 8th

2017: 12th

2018: 12th

It's hard to recruit when you are coming from an inferior conference, at a school where you have no basketball history, ECU has only made the tournament twice, and lost in the first round both times. Not to mention they are going up against schools like Cincinnati, UConn, and Houston who have been to multiple final fours and have way better facilities to offer than ECU. This eventually led to the resignation of Jeff Lebo and the hiring of Joe Dooley. Dooley certainly has a feel to him that he is going to turn things around, and I hope they do because when Minges Coliseum is full, it's a pretty crazy environment. Dooley already has 3, three star prospects in the 2019 class.

For Tulane, they have had decent recruiting classes, with both Ed Conroy and Mike Dunleavy. Probably not rosters to make the NCAA Tournament, but they have been in the middle of the pack in recruiting in the conference, so it's strange to see them so far behind everyone else, but they are still making a huge jump between Conference USA, and Devlin Fieldhouse is nothing more than a high school gym right now. The bottom line is that both schools made bad coaching hires when they were in Conference USA and they were sitting ducks when they came to the AAC. Tulane definitely felt like they had to make some noise and get a coach everybody knew, but in reality they got a washed up NBA coach. As far as I'm concerned