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10 is too low. There’s enough talent on this team that 13 should be the minimum. If they gel and the defense supplies enough points, they can be over 500.
This team will win a lot more than 10 games, and will surprise a lot of people. We have everything we need to be a winner, size, ability, toughness, and the ability to score inside and out.
If I had to make a prediction, I'd have us at something like 16-15 (7-13). I think we'll struggle scoring against some of the Big Ten defenses, but hopefully our defense will be good enough to keep us in games.
much deeper than in previous years, i think that helps as well.
I say sincerely that I respect your opinions about college basketball. Considering all of the chaos that happened after last season ended, I guess that your projected record would be acceptable. However, it would've been nice to build on the great ending to last season better. It would be nice to win at least half of the conference games. I do think that the AD did about as well as he could have in stabilizing the situation.
The nice thing now is that we have something to build off of heading into next year. No idea if Ace would come back again, and/or if we could hold the full roster together, but the only guys we definitely lose are Wahab, O'Boyle, and Mitchell. Last year was an incredible amount of fun, but we knew looking at the roster that we'd be mostly hitting the reset button this year. That's not really the case moving forward.
Purdue was on BTN last night, and of course Edey still is there. It would've been nice to see him leave after last season, but of course he had to come back to torment the Big 10 for another season. He was the difference between them being a No. 1 ranked team for much of last season and a borderline tournament team IMO. In fact, without him, I believe that PSU was a better team than Purdue at the end of last season.
I did love Radford sending out the 5'8" guy for the tip against him.
I just don't see us struggling to score against anyone. We have three great 3 point shooters all 6'5" or taller in Brown, Hicks and Johnson. Dunn is also a good outside shooter, O'Boyle has made 196 3 pointers in his college career. Both Baldwin and Clary are dynamic point guards who can score, and although Wahab isn't a dominating center, he is capable and can score so you can't forget him. They have an outside and inside game so I don't see how they won't be able to score.
“Great”?
Brown didn't play enough last year to use that as any type of eval., and he played 6 minutes against Robert Morris. He was a prolific shooting guard in high school and showed just how sweet a shot he does have. He has the size to play in the Big Ten, and his left handed layup in traffic right off a pass shows his ability.
We missed out on the Purdue-Kansas matchup, but Purdue won the title in an incredible field and will be #1 come Monday. They'll likely be favored in every game the rest of the season (unless they hit a rough patch). We only play them once this year, at their place. Kinda sucks from a fan standpoint that we miss out on them at the BJC.
It would be great to see them at the Jordan Center, and they should be favored in every game. They just beat 3 top 10 teams in 3 days, but if something happens to Edey they won't be favored in many games.
They will not be in the bottom 2 of the conference. Bank on that baring any injuries,
The challenge is figuring out who will be at this point. I've seen every Big Ten team play at least twice now, and no one is awful. We can probably pencil in Minnesota at the bottom, but beyond them, it's a crapshoot. It's a zero sum game, and we could still be top 65-70ish and finish in 13th.
Coach has been playing a lot of people in these early games. It will be interesting to see if he drops down to an 8 man rotation as the competition becomes more difficult. Will Wahab be on the floor for 30+ minutes today if the game is close?
Coming into the season, I would have guess it was O'Boyle...hoping today is the day he can get it going and knock a few down, as we'll need them.
We will learn a lot about our team today. I have seen the Big Ten play so far this year, and outside of Purdue they all look beatable. This cold be the year we finally knock off Wisconsin. I think we can beat Rutgers, Maryland, Northwestern, and finish above the tenth place again. Puff Johnson looked good coming back, and when we get Aire back we should have some depth at the 5 spot.
