Muffin Top 04 said:
I like the athleticism this team has so the defense should be a top 5-10 defense
We weren't even a top 5-10 defense last year, so I think expecting us to be an elite defensive team this year is setting unreasonable expectations.
I think we
could be a tournament team, but some things are going to have to happen that each on their own wouldn't be unlikely, but taken as a group might be unlikely. Going from most important to least important...
#1 - Starks has to take better care of the ball, and be a more mature player about controlling the flow of the game. - I think this is fairly likely, he was a true freshman last year, playing a much bigger role than expected with really no backup down the stretch, he tried to shoulder the whole burden even when he really didn't have to. I expect/hope Starks is going to be a very good player this season.
#2 - We have to be a better three point shooting team. - We were AWFUL at shooting threes last season. If we're going to be any good at all this year, this has to be a strength, or at least it can't be a weakness.
#3 - We're going to have to play fast, and as fans we're going to have to live with what we've all grown up believing are bad shots. - We don't have a lot of guys that can put the ball on the ground and get to the basket, we certainly don't have any proven guys that can score on the low block, and in Kennedy's
eighth(!) season I don't really see any reason to expect us to suddenly become good at getting guys open off screens. So when guys are open, they're going to have to pull the trigger. Early in the shot clock, in transition, etc. If you're open, green light.
#4 - We're going to have to rebound more as a team - Simple fact is we just lost two of the best rebounders in school history, and they were so good at it that we could get away with some poor fundamentals at times. We're not going to replace Williams and Davis, but to use a moneyball phrase, we'll have to make it up in the aggregate.
Everyone is going to have to rebound better.
If all of that happens, then we could be a pretty good team. Gilder is a great player, Starks could become one fairly easily, I expect Flagg is going to become a really good player this season. He was a pretty good player last year playing on a team that didn't have a good role for his type of player. I could see him becoming a Jalen Jones type player. Hits enough threes that you can't leave him open, which gives him some space to slash. He's also a very good rebounder. Just has a good feel around the rim.
If the new guys can at least be replacement level type players, we've got some pieces we could make work. Teams built like this one have been good before. In fact we'd have a pretty good roster for coaches like Rick Barnes or maybe Frank Martin.
But we haven't seen Kennedy have success with a roster like this yet. When we've been good we've mostly overwhelmed our opponents with talent, and that's not going to be the case this year.
So, TL;DR version: I wish I could expect this team to be a tournament team because I do think there are some good pieces to work with, but unfair or not I don't truly believe that Kennedy will get the most out of this team so if I had to make a prediction today I'd say we're probably going to be a not-quite-good-enough-to-be-on-the-bubble team.