I'm not sure that Price and Neal would just be maudlin sentiment. Neal's New Mexico team is second in the Mountain West, and Price's Charlotte team is surprising.
The preseason predictions that I saw were that Charlotte would go 4-14 in conference after losing 4 of their top 5 scorers from last year. They are currently 6-6. They're remaining games are:
@Marshall (they beat Marshall at home, 103-95)
@WKU (they beat them at home 88-71)
UTSA (who are 4-22, 2-11 in conf)
UTEP (who are 15-11, 7-6 in conf)
@Rice (they beat them at home 102-73)
@UNT (the beat them at home 103-79)
Now, I don't know what home-court advantage looks like in Conf USA, but I'd be surprised if it's 15+ pts. It seems to me that they should win at least 4 of those last 6 and have a decent shot of winning them out. If I'm looking at this right, their 6 conference losses have been 9, 3, 1, 2, 5, 5. And the 3 pt loss was in OT to ODU. Heck, when you consider that they've played the best teams in the conference to within a bucket and beat most of the worst teams like a drum, you can't write them off from winning the conf usa tournament and punching their ticket.
Like I've said before, I'm not saying Price is the guy, but I'm not sure how quickly you should sneeze at these results.