We know what they are now - a bad basketball team.

Tulane (14-7, 2-4) could and should finish with a much better record in struggling Conference USA than in the last three, but the jig appears to be up on substantive improvement. The Green Wave's second-half performance against UCF (15-5, 5-1) at Devlin Fieldhouse on Wednesday night left little doubt.

In a game it had to win and one in which it led 16-4 early and 28-21 at the half, Tulane scored 10 points in the first 17 minutes of the second half and lost 58-50.

That's right. Ten points.

A nine-point flurry in the last 1:43 showed the Wave refused to quit, but it did not take the edge off a thoroughly depressing evening for the 2,030 fans in attendance. At this point in coach Ed Conroy's three-year tenure, playing hard is not good enough. As Bill Walton might say, don't mistake effort for execution.

"A lot of our shots just didn't fall, which got our guys down," said senior Kendall Timmons, who missed all four of his attempts in the second half. "It's just like all the other ones that we were up and couldn't close out. Hopefully one day we'll be able to close it out."



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