2024-25 Final Game Notes
A season of firsts came to a close for the SMU men's basketball team on Sunday in the second round of the NIT.
It was the first for the Mustangs in the ACC and with head coach Andy Enfield in charge. There were plenty of unknowns coming into the season, but a 24-win campaign, including 13 conference wins, was a solid start to the new era.
"Overall, our guys had an outstanding season, to tie for fourth place in the ACC in the first year. They won seven league road games, were 7-3 on the road, which is very hard to do," Enfield said. "... I think we'll remember they were picked 13th and came in fourth. Very proud of that."
SMU had to play the early part of the season without 7-foot-2 freshman Samet Yiğitoğlu while waiting for NCAA clearance and Matt Cross who suffered an injury one minute into the first game.
The Mustangs grew together throughout the season and made the necessary improvements to have success moving into a power conference.
"This group was very fun to coach. They took coaching extremely well. They improved. And I think our fans could see that throughout the season, had a lot of big wins. … Guys did a good job of improving individually, defensively and offensively sharing the ball. Had six guys average double figures. That means we shared the basketball, and our defense was much improved as the season progressed."
Boopie Miller, Chuck Harris, Cross, Kario Oquendo, Yiğitoğlu and B.J. Edwards all averaged in double figures for most of the season for the Mustangs.
But SMU was without Miller for five of the final seven games of the regular season. A three-way tie for fourth in the ACC gave the Mustangs the No. 6 seed for the ACC tournament.
SMU dominated a Syracuse team it needed a last-second shot to beat just a week before in the first round, winning its first ever ACC tournament game by 20. The Mustangs then took third-seeded and 10th-ranked Clemson to the wire in the quarterfinals, but came up just short.
"We lost a heartbreaker to Clemson in the ACC tournament. Our guys battled," Enfield said. "It was an extremely physical game, and we knew we knew we needed to win that game to have a chance to be on the bubble and to lose it in the last possession … It was a really tough way to lose your last ACC game."
Harris averaged 12.9 points this season. His 76 3-pointers made is tied for 10th in a single season while his career numbers of 82.5% from the free throw line (8th), 41.1% from 3 (T-9th) and 144 made 3s (10th) are all Top 10 in school history.
As one of just three players who returned from last year, Harris had a special appreciation for what the Mustangs were able to accomplish this season. While he won't be a part of what the program achieves moving forward, he was key to laying the foundation and showing SMU belongs.
"I'm pretty proud that I was able to be part of the first group that came into the ACC," Harris said. "Despite not making the tournament, we finished fourth in a major conference, which is pretty special, especially coming off our football team's success and ACC, as well. So it's pretty accomplished. And just being a pioneer for the future of SMU and ACC."
This offseason will be crucial for SMU to build on this year's success. But this offseason does have its advantages over last year's. This time last year, Enfield hadn't even been named the new SMU head coach.
That forced him and the staff to be in catch-up mode most of the offseason to put this year's roster together. It makes what the Mustangs accomplished this season even more impressive.
"It was chaos last year," Enfield said. "We were trying to rebuild a new program, a new team, and I thought our coaching staff did a great job of evaluating and recruiting to get seven transfers and then Samet late to have 10 new players, including the freshmen. So about 10 new players on this team, that's why it's so impressive what these guys did, because you have 10 new players and they came together and really improved as a group, which was fun to watch."
Oquendo was one of those players. He was the first guy off the bench for most of the season and stepped into the starting lineup when Miller went out.
His last game in an SMU jersey may have been his best. Oquendo scored 26 points in the first half, including all of the first 10 points and 17 of the first 19 points for the Mustangs in the game.
Oquendo finished with 31 points, his season high and most since scoring 33 during the 2021-22 season at Georgia.
"Personally, it was special to me," Oquendo said of the season. "Felt like we grew a lot as a team over the year. I think we really showed a lot of people that SMU is a good, really good program and it's going to stay that way for the next couple of years and beyond."
Part of that future is in place with the highest-ranked class ever singing in November. SMU added four-star recruits Jermaine O'Neal, Jr., Jaden Toombs and Nigel Walls. The class is ranked No. 6 in the country and third in the ACC behind Duke (No. 1) and Notre Dame (No. 5) by ESPN.
The Mustangs have also already been active early in the transfer portal to help fill out the roster.
"We have an outstanding freshman class assigned to come here next year as freshmen, we're high on all those guys. We do lose five seniors, so we do have to replace some shooting, some scoring. … I know the transfer portal is always a little tricky, because starting (Monday) there'll be hundreds of names in there, and then as you go through, there'll be dozens more each day. And so the next month is going to be a grind, recruiting and trying to evaluate and having players and their parents come for visits. But I don't think we need too many. We'll see how many players return on our existing roster, and then try to fill in from there."
One thing is for sure, the Mustangs are trending in the right direction.
