History will most likely look back at the past three seasons as the most difficult period in University of New Orleans basketball.

It started with Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, forcing the entire team to abandon New Orleans and spent the first semester living, attending school and playing home games in Tyler Texas.

When the Privateers returned from Texas, they found their home court at Lakeland Arena unusable and spent the past 2 1/2 seasons playing in the Human Performance Center, an antiquated on-campus 1,200-seat gym dubbed "The Chamber of Horrors" before the basketball program moved out in 1983.

At the end of that season, coach Monte Towe bailed on the program to become an assistant coach at North Carolina State. Texas A&M assistant Buzz Williams took over for the 2006-07 season but he too abandoned the Privateers after one season to become an assistant at Marquette.

In came Joe Pasternack, a former Indiana and Cal assistant and a native of New Orleans but the third coach in three seasons. Through it all, the Privateers remained both resilient and competitive and refused to accept excuses on the way to a 19-13 finish, 8-10 in the Sun Belt.

That was the case once again when UNO closed out the 2007-08 season with a hard-fought 81-77 loss at top-seeded South Alabama in the second round of the Sun Belt tournament.

"We didn't come here just to play better and make it closer than last time," guard Bo McCalebb told The Times-Picayune. "We came here to win. We didn't get it done."

While Pasternack appears to be committed to the future, he'll have to start over without six seniors, five of whom played key roles for the Privateers and three of whom endured the entire three-year saga. No one will be more difficult to replace than McCalebb, who completed his career as the Sun Belt's all-time leading scorer.

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