In Chris Acker's postgame press conference after the Irvine meltdown, he said his team was consistently better in practice than they had shown in games.

Of course, Chris! That's because they're facing each other, and not the more talented/better-coached conference opponents.

I am a firm believer that Acker will figure this out at some point. But man, he's pieced together the worst team in the conference. And one of the worst teams in the country by every metric.

They aren't showing good effort in these games. As evidenced by the 7 and-ones allowed thus far vs. UCSB. That's just lazy defense. On offense, it's even worse. They routinely have lazy turnovers, and constantly get destroyed on the glass. Maybe there's more to it than meets the eye-effort wise. But as a spectator, the effort is horrible.

I question the recruiting decisions made before this season. Christian Richardson is 7-foot-1, but cannot get a rebound. Cam Denson has a ton of athleticism but is the least polished player in this league. Ramel Lloyd seemingly no longer is on the team. Askew is a good player, but a volume shooter that does not connect at a high percentage.

It's very frustrating watching this team. I could expect some first-year struggls. But I also would expect in-season improvement. That hasn't come. This coaching staff has not made them better. There's almost no time left to turn it around and make the conference tournament.

Would be a horrible failure for a school like LBSU to not even make its conference tourney.