I said this season (this season was mirage and masked flaws)- the early conference gave us more wins than we should have had early on so that increases the number. And yes 26 wins overall in a conference down year. If we played a regular ooc with better teams (and to be honest I like the approach of early on weaker teams to build confidence- Mullin just failed to take opportunity to give bench burn which hurt) that number goes down.
Coupled with if this was a typical BE year with stronger teams we are nothing more than a 17-18 win team. We ran a very poor offensive scheme for college, had no front-court and no bench depth. Mullin took essentially 4 seasons to build a solid NIT team if we want to be entirely realistic with the talent level.
And after next year- if large step back, no big time recruits in pipeline and perhaps a decommit he may resign.....
Not having Owens really ruined the year. For example, with him, we would have beaten Depaul at home with Ponds hurt. They just kept feeding the post, we kept fouling, and Mullin had no answer other than to yell at the refs for the foul calls.
Owens presence would have likely been enough to split the home and homes with providence and Xavier too.
That's 24 wins. Who knows how it would have affected each tournament game but probably one win in one of those. So 25 total.
The process became difficult this year once Owens bailed because we had no one of worth (keita stinks, Roberts is too green, and clark is not big enough on d despite his best efforts) at the 4 or 5.
Now, if we had a guy who was an experienced head coach, he could have won those 25 games without Owens. But we don't.