Season Outlook
I mentioned this regarding East Carolina in the aforementioned article, and it also holds true for Tulane – arguably, and even more so given how young the Green Wave are: success may not happen immediately, but Ron Hunter is setting this team up to win in the future.
There is not a single senior on the Green Wave roster this season. This is a team that will endure growing pains, especially in trying to mix the incoming transfers with the remaining core group of Walker, Days, and Koka.
If this team can pull off a few upsets in the AAC – which they proved they could do last year – then that would do wonders for this team’s confidence heading into the future. With Hightower, Zhang, Thompson, and Lawson all gone, Tulane will have a new identity in just year two under Hunter.
That identity will, almost assuredly, not yield ground-breaking results this season, nor should Tulane fans expect their first NCAA tournament berth in almost 25 years to happen almost immediately.
What Tulane fans should expect from their program is a team with the drive to surpass expectations. Tulane, much like East Carolina, has been a bit of a laughingstock in the AAC. With Hunter at the helm, that reputation will be gone in a matter of time.
This is a young team with much to prove, and they should prove their potential on a few occasions this season. If they can surpass last year’s AAC-win total of four and make a leap out of the bottom spot of the conference, this is a team that will be talked about as a potential upper-half program in the AAC in 2021-22.
Until then, Green Wave fans should strap in. This will be a rocky year as the newcomers assimilate into the program, but it will also resemble last season – in a good way. There will undoubtedly be highs – and those are the moments Tulane fans should get used to for the nearby future.