No, not at all. Beard and the transfer portal brought in an absolute amazing amount of talent. Basketball isn't like football where you need a team to gel for half the season or learn a complex offense. They have to be able to play team basketball, but individual talents have much more impact on this game. I heard a national guy on the radio say that our second string could probably be ranked in the top 25. We have possibly more depth and as complete a team as anyone else in the entire nation.
I have to think any team with a new coach and so many new players would be over-rated at #5. Maybe they will gel by the end of the season and be very good, but that's certainly very optimistic for the beginning. We don't know what will develop at this point.
We’ll find out early how good they are. Horns play preseason #1 Gonzaga early. At their place. If we beat them or take them down to the wire that’s a real good sign. I think this season is going to be exciting, to say the least.
We're basically a "Dream Team" of transfers that are joining a Top-10 team (who shouldn't have lost in the 1st round of the NCAAs) and arguably the best "done-more-with-less" head coach in all of the power conferences. So yeah, #5 sounds about right. Anything worse than 11-1 heading into conference play would be kind of disastrous, considering who we're playing. I've got the O/U at 24 wins before conference tourney time.
Hence my 11-1 comment. It's very likely that we lose to the Zags due to still figuring out how to tie our new shoes. But the rest of the nonconference slate? Here's their finishing Sagarin rankings: Houston Baptist - 345 Northern CO - 214 SJSU - 335 Cal Baptist - 242 Sam State - 182 UTRGV - 282 Seton Hall - 47 (maybe a chance?) UAPB - 352 Stanford - 67 Rice - 193 Incarnate Word - 344 I guess there's nowhere to go but up for most of these schools, and the pandemic year should be taken with a grain of salt. But losing to pretty much any of them outside of Seton Hall or Stanford would need to be an "everyone's injured or suspended or lost the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time" excuse.
I think somewhere in the top 10 was expected. So why not exactly in the middle of it? I'm fine with it.
I don't know that the players who didn't leave were Top 10 tbf. We lost a lot of talent That being said we definitely returned a solid core
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