I honestly see 22-25 wins if everyone stays and a solid assistant is hired.
Complete insanity
We'll have depth for the first time. Size for the first time. Experience all over the court. Oh, and the best player in the conference as an upperclassman.
Couple of things. I do think SJU can have a big turnaround next year. But more importantly they will have to, there is no way he can win 7 league games next year and claim it was an improvement based on this year being a disaster. Again he does not get the benefit of the doubt like he did after year 1. He does not get to benefit from a disaster this year. The year 4 expectations still remain. As I said it is a two year plan now with a HUGE jump next year expected and then year 5 competing with Nova. So I like your enthusiasm...
...but you are way overstating things. You are saying SJU will have depth and some frontcourt talent for the first time, that doesn't guarantee anything. As you know the other 9 teams are not standing still. They will have talent and depth and the idea that SJU is going to jump 10-11 wins based simply on extra bodies is a bit of a leap of faith.
Secondly you are giving WAAAYYY too much credit for last year's 8 wins. Again if you count the BE Tourney they were 8-12. All 12 losses weren't close. They had zero chance to win any of them. They won I counted 4 games that could have gone either way, both wins against Georgetown at MSG, road win at DePaul and the Butler game at Carnesecca. They won every one, quite frankly they were probably closer to 6-14 than say 10-10. Put it to you another way, they probably didn't improve as much as we thought last year. So don't put too much stock in last year's record. In fact if anything some of those close wins last year are starting to even out this year with losses. Since they really had no close losses last year.
Lastly, Ponds the best player next year in the BE?? Hopefully he improves but right now based on production and the fact the teams they play on are simply more successful I would put Markus Howard of Marquette, Jalen Brunson/Mikal Bridges/Omari Spellman/Phil Booth/Donte D all have eligiblity for Nova left after this year., Kamar Baldwin of Butler is a terrific player, Kyri Thomas of Creighton is averagine 14.6 while shooting over 50% and is a Junior. I think Shamorie can be one of the best guards in the BE next year but I have to see a LOT more consistency to actually say he is the best returning player in the BE. Not sure how other than SJU hype machine can anyone actually say that at this point.
Lastly when teams have had HUGE 1 year turnarounds, Minnesota last year, Oklahoma this year, it usually has been accompanied by a big time national talent joining the program. Amir Coffey with Minny and Trae Yound with Oklahoma. There is no one on SJU's roster that has that type of talent. But no doubt they should be improved but more importantly they expect to be SIGNIFICANTLY improved (remember the 2 year plan starts next year) and even more important than that they BETTER be significantly better next year...
It's odd that you site last year's record and say we weren't close in any of the losses. But we've been close in all but three games this season. We could just as easily be 8-3 in conference play this year if we had more depth and experience. We're so much more competitive this year over last year.
How much more experience do you want? We have 6 guys playing that have been in college for 3 years or more. Would you like to start 5 5th year seniors to have enough experience? If you are talking coaching, thats a different story
Tariq Owens has started in 29 games over three years. This is the first season he's started more than eight. That's not a lot of experience. This is the first time Marvin Clark has started more than 7 games. Justin Simon started zero games before coming here. Bashir Ahmed is in his second season. The only guys with real experience are Ponds and Yakwe. Sitting out a year isn't experience. I want guys who've averaged more than 15 minutes per game before this year (so add Owens to the list of experienced players). It's also a team that is largely playing only their second year together. That's not experience. I want a team that's largely played 3 years together
Here's the amount of minutes played before this season:
Owens: 815
Clark; 729
Simon: 180
Ponds: 1,109
Ahmed: 881
Yakwe: 1,284
Alibegovic: 978
That's 5,976 minutes from seven guys. Those seven average 284 minutes over last three years
Now here's Villanova
Brunson: 2,077
Bridges: 1,886
DiVincenzo: 919
Booth: 1,468
Paschall (a transfer): 1,623
That's 7,973 from five guys and they are supplanted by freshman. Those five average 531 minutes over the last three years.
That's a difference of 1,997 total minutes. Obviously skill is a factor and I'm not saying that if we had the experience that Villanova had we'd be Villanova. All I'm saying is, the actual in-game experience of our time is very weak.