Turn Up the Orange | UTEP sports talk

Bench Culpepper

The fans have said it.

Checho Miguel: "The coach has put together a solid team. Too bad he can't control Culpepper's shot selections and his inability to see the open man."

Joe on Utepia has said it.

The team could be a "team" if Randy Culpepper didn't shoot all the darn time. There are others on the floor, too, you know. We just never saw them get into the offensive flow.

And, most surprisingly, New Mexico State coach Marvin Menzies said it after his team got left behind in the second half of a game Culpepper was kicked out of.

"I don't mean any disrespect to Culpepper, but they were a better team without him in the second half," Menzies said. "They shared the ball and looked for the open man."

Now all the Miners basketball team needs is for coach Tony Barbee to hear it. Anyone have a megaphone?

Big win

UTEP 96, Texas Tech 78. Wow.

About everything you need to know about this one was right there in Bill Knight's story.

Stefon Jackson showed he wasn't just talking when he said the team was embarrassed by their lack of effort in the NMSU game. They came out fired up and beat a team they've lost to a lot in the past few years.

It appears Coach Barbee has this team fired up now. Saturday's game, and effort, against NMSU, in front of a home crowd, should help us decide if it's for real.

Texas Tech test

The old theory on UTEP basketball's woes this season was that UTEP has some great athletes, but poor coaching and Culpepper's selfishness was holding the team back.

But after watching the NMSU players run past, jump over and just plain outplay the Miners last weekend, I'm not sure anymore UTEP has the athletes either.

The Texas Tech game tonight could get very ugly. Tech not only will have that athletes to outrun UTEP, they likely will be better coached, as well.

It will be interesting to see if, from an athletic standpoint, UTEP can keep up. The only hope for this season is to hope that UTEP really does have some athletes, but for some reason, they just didn't get excited enough for the NMSU game. That's certainly what Stefon Jackson seemed to hint at in today's story:

"New Mexico State is a good team, and they have a good coaching staff," UTEP senior Stefon Jackson said. "We didn't play hard enough. They outscrapped us, outrebounded us. I'm glad we're playing Texas Tech Wednesday night. It will give us a chance to get back on the court and prove ourselves. We let our fans down and we let ourselves down. We know Texas Tech will be tough. They've got a good team and a good coaching staff, too."

Should be an interesting game tonight. And it should tell us a lot about where this season is heading.

How Mike Price and Mack Brown voted in coaches' poll

Maybe it was a show of respect for how Texas beat UTEP earlier this year. Or maybe it was just backing other Texans, but UTEP coach Mike Price voted for Texas to be No. 1 in the coaches' poll Sunday, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Price was one of four voters in the coaches' poll who placed the Longhorns at the top of their regular-season ballots.

Texas coach Mack Brown voted for Florida ahead of Texas and Oklahoma in the coaches' poll. Texas finished NO. 3 in the BCS standings Sunday.

Read the full story here.

Reader comments

I didn't get a chance to watch UTEP's win Saturday over Sam Houston State (though I was glad to read that Culpepper got four assists!), so let's highlight some reader comments from the post below instead.

Mike says, "What a ballhog Coldpepper is. They keep saying he's a shooter. Well, he's shooting a whopping 25% from 3 this year after shooting a red hot 33% last year."

Checho Miguel says, "The coach has put together a solid team. Too bad he can't control Culpepper's shot selections and his inability to see the open man."

Adrian says, "Finally someone is taking the time to analyze UTEP's biggest weakness under coach Barbee. Ever since Culpepper arrived at UTEP, he has been more damaging to the overall performance of the team. No one denies his talent, but selfishness is a cancer that ultimately destroys any team. It is clear that he not here to help UTEP win games, he is here to impress NBA scouts by scoring a lot of points."

Jay (not Koester) says, "No matter how you look at it, it comes back to Barbee. Apparently his offensive strategy is for his players to go one on one. Where is the coaching?"

Javi comes to Culpepper's defense, "I CAN NOT believe those comments! Culpepper is the most active player on both offense and defense. He hustles on every play. By the time he is done he will be # 1 in points and steals. We are lucky that Barbee recruited such an amazing player."

Lowercase Ray says, "Culpepper needs to stop competing with DJ and start learning from him. He'll get his chance the next two years to prove his worth. The guy I'm impressed with so far is Arnett Moultrie. I know it's still early in his career, but with a second double-double in a row he's definitely been coming on lately."

Ummm, now that it's my turn, I guess I don't have anything to add to all that. Except to say that I suspect Javi must be Culpepper's roommate or something. But thanks for the comments, and let's keep the conversation going. We'll fix this team yet.

Team first, Culpepper

After watching a few UTEP basketball games, I really am enjoying Julyan Stone. The guy really knows how to distribute the ball. He has 34 assists on the year, more than double anybody else on the team.

You know who is not as fun to watch? Randy Culpepper. He seems to be more concerned with keeping up with Stefon Jackson's scoring average than anything else. (He's doing a pretty good job at that, by the way, averaging 20.2 points a game to Jackson's 20.3 points per game.)

But Stefon has also dished out 14 assists this year. Culpepper has dished out a paltry six assists all year long. About one a game.

It's become annoying watching Culpepper jack up every shot he can get without even looking for a teammate to dish to.

He seems, especially, to avoid ever passing to Stefon ... or is that just my imagination?

NMSU stats embarrassing for UTEP

I thought the story NMSU fires football coach Hal Mumme included a paragraph that was kind of embarrassing for UTEP football. The story included this line:

Mumme had a 11-38 record as NMSU's head coach, but five of those victories were against teams from the Football Championship Subdivision.

So, over four years, Hal Mumme got only six victories over Football Bowl Subdivision teams ... and two of those victories were over UTEP! That's sad.

Take out UTEP and subdivision teams, and Mumme only averaged one victory a year.

So I ask, how did UTEP lose to that team each of the past two years?

And, I'm a Mike Price fan ... but is his job really safe if Hal Mumme's isn't?