What If… UTSA becomes a basketball school in the 90s

Previously in the What If Series: What If… No UTSA Football | What if… Jeff Traylor went to Texas Tech

UTSA’s basketball programs have been pounding the rock for more than 40 years and have made a national postseason tournament nine times, including six trips to the NCAA Tournament. The Roadrunner men have made four trips to the NCAA tournament and one trip to the College Insiders Tournament in 2017-18 season. The Roadrunner women have made two trips to the NCAA tournament in 2008 and 2009 and in the last two seasons have appeared in the WNIT and the WBIT.

In Conference tournament finals, the games that lead to NCAA tournament berths, the Roadrunner men are 4-3 all-time and the Roadrunner women are 2-2 with all four of their trips coming as members of the Southland Conference between 2003 and 2009.
In the first What If series back in 2020 I looked at how UTSA basketball teams might have faired in the NCAA tournament if those five losses in the conference tournament finals had been wins.

This time its a look at what the basketball programs might look like today if they had gotten bigger at different points in the program history. What if UTSA had decided to go all in on becoming a basketball school in the 1990s before Football began to grow on the community?

What does UTSA as a basketball school look like today?

There was a time when UTSA men’s basketball played several home games at the same arena as the San Antonio Spurs, first at Hemisfair Arena, then in the Alamodome. UTSA men’s basketball most recently played in the Alamodome in 2007. Neither Roadrunner basketball team has played at Frost Bank Center, but if UTSA had decided to go all in on being a basketball school in the 90s it’s possible there would be a few games played by the Roadrunners in the current home of the Spurs today.

The best time for UTSA to go all in on basketball might have been early in the 1990s. The Roadrunner men had made their first NCAA tournament trip in the 1987-88 season and were perennially near the top of the standings in the Trans-American Athletic Conference (TAAC, today known as the Atlantic Sun Conference). The Roadrunner men joined the Southland Conference for the 1991-92 season and reached the conference tournament final in each of their first two years before losing both times to Louisiana-Monroe.

After losing to Louisiana Monroe in 1993 it would be six years before UTSA men’s basketball returned to the Southland Conference Tournament final in 1999. But its possible if the administration at the time of those losses to Louisiana-Monroe decided to push for a larger basketball program the Roadrunners might have become a Southland Conference Power by the end of the 1990s.

Unlike with UTSA football where there was no pro team for San Antonians to get behind, UTSA Basketball was just another college team in a city that had fallen head over heels in love with the Spurs when that team first came to town as an ABA team from Dallas in 1973. That love was made complete when the Spurs were one of the four teams to merge from the ABA into the NBA in 1976, five years before UTSA began its basketball program.

UTSA basketball came into a town that didn’t really need college basketball because it had the Spurs. If UTSA had gotten in with the Spurs early, parlaying those annual games at Hemisfair arena into a doubleheader with the Spurs perhaps it might have led to the growth of both the men’s and women’s basketball programs in the late 80s and early 90s.

If UTSA basketball had figured out a way to partner with the Spurs in the early 90s, perhaps on a joint practice venue, they could have been lifted by the Spurs’ rising tide later in the decade. San Antonio would be a complete basketball city with the Spurs winning NBA Championships and UTSA basketball becoming a team that was making semi-regular trips to the NCAA tournament. Even without the partnership with the Spurs, UTSA became known as a quiet place for out of town NBA players to get some shots up away from the public eye. Dirk Nowitzki used the Convocation Center as a place to shoot when he led the Dallas Mavericks down for a playoff series with the Spurs in 2009.

Even without the partnership with the Spurs, UTSA could have become a basketball school by looking at a few of its rivals in the Southland Conference. Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin put money into their programs and were able to lift the programs as well as their other sports in the process. Stephen F. Austin got serious about basketball in the 2000s and in the 2010s were making regular trips to the NCAA tournament and in the process bringing more money and prestige to the program. Though there was a fall for SFA and they had to vacate a number of wins in the latter half of the 2010s for NCAA infractions.

It’s possible that UTSA decides to put more money into the basketball programs in the 90s and has a climb up the ladder, maybe even getting a 12 or 13 seed in the NCAA tournament over the years of the 90s and 2000s and 2010s. Perhaps the success of the men in the 90s leads to increased success for the women’s program before their actual glory days of the late 2000s. That opens up a whole other what if in terms of who might have become the coaches of the different programs over the years. Then it is interesting to imagine a UTSA basketball program that has had success in the NCAA tournament, maybe a Sweet 16 berth or two and a coach comes in willing to bend the rules to try and reach a final four. Would UTSA be able to keep the program clean or would the allure of making a final four be too much and cause corners to be cut?

A UTSA that becomes a basketball school in the 1990s might be finding itself in the midst of sanctions in the 2020s. In our timeline UTSA basketball has suffered from the rapid ascent of the athletics department from the Southland to the American in a dozen years. In a timeline where UTSA chose to build the basketball program up before starting football maybe UTSA is considered one of the strong basketball programs in the American. Maybe UTSA never starts football because basketball takes off and the Roadrunners are still conference mates with the likes of SFA and UT-Arlington.

I like to think that UTSA would still have started football even after putting more resources into basketball into the 90s. It would have given the university a larger front porch to show off to the country with a good football and good to great basketball programs. UTSA building basketball into a consistent power might have led to an enlarged or new Convocation Center. If UTSA had become a basketball school in the 90s it might look completely different from the school we all know today.

Next Week: What If UTSA never leaves Conference USA or never leaves the Southland Conference