by Dick Weiss, for The American

SMU head coach Tim Jankovich deserved better this season.

Jankovich -- one of the best technical minds in college basketball -- looked like he had coached the Mustangs into NCAA Tournament conversation in what many expected to be a retooling year. The Mustangs started the season 14-6 with three victories over Top 15 teams—then-No. 2 Arizona, No. 15 USC and No. 7 Wichita State – to go along with a potential NCAA team in Boise State.    

When the Mustangs were healthy, they had the potential to be competitive with anyone in The American and at one point had even been penciled into the NCAA bracket again by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.

Then the injuries hit. 

Jankovich never anticipated playing without guard Shake Milton, the preseason All-American Player of the Year, who was averaging 18 points, including a career-high 33 points against Wichita State on Jan. 17, and has missed five games because of dislocated fingers in his right shooting hand. Starting guard Jarrey Foster was lost for the year with a torn ACL he suffered at Wichita State. Promising freshman forward Everett Ray went down Jan. 20 with an injured left foot.

If that wasn’t enough, 6-9 freshman forward Ethan Chargois, a rising star with a versatile inside-outside game, has been less with a 100 percent and missed the team’s home loss against Cincinnati last week after he rolled his ankle during warm ups. In that game, redshirt senior guard Ben Emelogu II was the only player available from last year’s NCAA Tournament team, and he was nursing a bruised hand. The injuries have been compounded because the program is still dealing with reduced scholarships through next season.

Jankovich is down to seven scholarship players and not all of them are healthy.

Every game has suddenly become a struggle.

SMU is 15-12 and 5-9 in conference play following a 52-37 loss at UCF on Saturday. The Mustangs have lost five straight games and have struggled to stop the bleeding on the road, where they are 1-9. Emelogu scored 12 points on 3 of 10 shooting for the Mustangs, who were just 11 for 43 (25.6 percent) from the field against a stout UCF defense. Hot-shooting junior guard Jahmal McMurray, who entered the game averaging 23 points in the first four games Milton missed, never found his rhythm offensively and finished with just seven points.

“What I try to draw from is what my parents taught me. I was raised that no matter what, you do your best,” Jakovich said following the game. No matter what’s thrown at you, you keep moving forward. This tests you. What we’re going through right now, I’ve never been tested close to this. We’re prideful. We want to win.’’

SMU has history in The American.  

The Mustangs quickly established themselves as the face of the new American Athletic Conference under iconic Naismith Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown and Jankovich, dominating the league for three years from 2015 through 2017, playing in front of sellout crowds at renovated Moody Coliseum that included President George W. Bush and re-emerging as a perennial NCAA tournament factor.

Brown took over the Mustangs in 2012 and hired Jankovich, who had worked for Bill Self at Kansas and had been head coach at Illinois State, as his associate head coach and coach-in-waiting. By his second year, Brown coached SMU to 27 wins and a championship appearance in the NIT. In his third year, SMU finished 27-7, winning its first conference title in 22 years, capturing both The American regular-season and tournament crowns, returning to the NCAA Tournament. In the 2015-16, SMU started the season with an unprecedented 18-0 record, climbing to No. 8 in the Associated Press poll and finishing the season with a 25-5 record.

When Brown stepped aside in the summer of 2016, SMU handed the reigns to Jankovich, who coached the Mustangs to a 9-0 start during the 2015-16 season when Brown was suspended by the NCAA,. All Jankovich did was coach SMU to a 30-5 record in his first full season, including a 17-1 record in The Anerican. The Mustangs, who won both the American regular season and the tournament, finished ranked 11^th in the AP poll and received No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

After the season, junior forward Semi Ojeleye, the American Player of the Year, declared for the NBA Draft alongside seniors Ben Moore and Sterling Brown. Ojeleye and Brown were selected 37^th by the Boston Celtics and 46^th overall by the Philadelphia 76ers, respectively. Moore spent 27 games in the NBA G-league before signing a two-way contract with the Indiana Pacers. Ojeleye made the Celtics and Brown, who was traded to Milwaukee before the season, signed with the Bucks where he has become a rotation player.

All of that is in the past.    

The fans to their credit have continued to show up, filling Moody to cheer this short-handed team and help them get through this uncharacteristic purgatory.   

“The amazing event of the last three weeks is what the mood is where it’s at,” Jankovich said. “It’s honestly the most surreal situation I’ve ever been in during my life. It’s just one issue after another that we’re trying to put a Band-Aid on and we’re not even remotely close to the team we were building. I feel for the players like you can’t believe. Injuries are no one’s fault. Injuries are luck.”