At least the good thing about ending your season in the NIT like this is that you can't be too upset...it's just the NIT.
A few things became pretty obvious tonight:
1. Martin isn't really ready to go anywhere. When Miami went to the M2M, Martin couldn't adjust and it decided the game. When you get outcoached by a guy whose fanbase wants him fired in front of maybe 1K fans, you're not ready for a bigger job.
2. Scheer is still showing that he's going to be ready to take on a bigger role next year, and Copeland had some good minutes. That's a nice rotation, and it showed that Martin did some thinking about next year and not just winning now.
3. That said, there are a couple of needs. The Bears are either going to have to find a scoring 5, or develop Rhine/Patterson. Patterson didn't get a minute tonight, and I'm almost beginning to wonder if he'll be on the roster this year. With Creekmore's struggles at the end of the year, it was obvious that Martin didn't have a use for him even in situations like tonight when he really could have helped.
4. Pickens will be a HUGE re-addition next year, but MSU still needs to find probably one more double-digit scorer. Whether that's Scheer, Christian Kirk, or someone else, I dunno.
5. Finally, and most importantly, this program deserves someone with a brain who knows how to make a schedule, because they don't have one right now. Whoever was responsible for this year's non-conference schedule really stuck the dagger in this team from the beginning. Whether it was depending on beating Tennessee for the entire SOS, to being blindingly dogged in scheduling every singly Arkansas team OTHER THAN THE GOOD ONE, to (the clincher) scheduling a game against Tulsa 48 hours after the UT team that had no hope of getting full effort, there is no sign that anyone in the MSU sports program has a clue in how to schedule to get an at-large bid. If Bill Rowe was responsible for the majority of this schedule, well, he's gone and he really should have left sooner. If Moats is responsible, then he has no clue how to be an AD, and he'd better learn or get out.
In the end, it was definitely a good season, but a bit disappointing. It will feel for a long time like the 2010-2011 Bears left money on the table. But at least we finally got that MVC title banner, and no matter how watered-down this conference is, that will be fun to have. Time to get to work on rebuilding.