SeattleAg05 said:
I honestly have no idea what to think. Two years ago, I think that team overachieved. Last year we had high expectations that they'd take the next step with another year, and it took them most the season to make it back to that caliber. Now this year, do we expect a jump still from another year? I'll pencil us in for a roller coaster of a season and an 8 seed.
I think projecting out a basketball season is hard because basketball is such a fluid sport and all the parts on the floor are so interconnected. A very good team overall with a specific weakness can get beat by a mediocre team with a particular strength if those happen to line up. And not just once in an upset, they could reliably beat them most of the time just because of the way the two teams line up. This can sort of happen in football, but the teams have to start out much closer to the same level overall.
So what you're looking for to say a team is good is:
a) how good is this team when they're playing well and playing the way they want to play?
b) how good are they when they're not playing well, but still playing the way they want to play?
c) how good are they at playing the way they want to play? Do they generally control the game flow?
d) how many options do they have to play other ways if teams force them out of the way they want to play?
Last year we were pretty good at A and C. At our best, in our game flow, we could beat anybody, and generally we controlled the game flow. We were really good at making teams play ugly basketball most of the time.
Where we weren't really good was b and d. For most of the season, if Wade wasn't hitting shots we were absolutely screwed. Even if we kept the game flow we wanted, we struggled to win games when we couldn't hit outside shots, and we had to keep shooting outside shots because we had very limited ability to create off the bounce and absolutely no ability to create in the post. (this changed a bit the last few weeks of the season when Manny became a much bigger offensive threat.)
So, looking at this year, I'm not seeing a big "jump" from last year from anyone in particular, but you have a lot of interesting pieces added to the puzzle that make us more multiple. Phelps adds another passer into the mix, something that Boots was terrible at. Payne is probably the biggest difference, he gives you someone that can actually create a bucket in the low post. Wilcher hopefully brings you some reliable shooting off the bench that can go off a few times (he had six games of 14+ points last season.) And you do expect some moderate improvement from Solo and hopefully Manny can be a little more like the player he ended the season as.
So it's less that we're going to be much better when we're at our best, but more that we shouldn't be as bad when we're at our worst. You take away a few of those losses, not all of them, we're going to have some bad games, it's basketball, but say you flip the home Arkansas and LSU games (or Memphis) and the road Vandy game and suddenly you're looking at a 4-5 seed kind of team.
