First 5/6 minutes of this game was the best I had seen us look offensively. Ball movement was crisp and a lot of good shots were taken, hopefully thereās more where that came from.
Agree on appreciating Ron sticking up for his guys when we were getting absolutely hosed.
The other finals from today:
1st place game:
TCU 83
Indiana State 69
3rd place game:
Bucknell 97
UNLV 72
5th place game:
Hawaii 68
URI 60
You think this team will be top half next year?
After watching this team this year, we are more likely next year to finish in the bottom half as opposed to the top half of league. We are losing our best player and some of you have high hopes for recruits making first year impacts.
Some of you should take at the stats/rankings of where the #7 team of cusa is and realize what kind of jump that would be for the team that is here today. Hopefully the recruits coming in show promise and can help. Year 2 will be rough. Year 3 better be a jump and moving towards top 200 team. Year 4 coach āshouldā be on the hot seat if not significant improvement. Itās mike hills first hire so it would have to be terrible for Sanchez to not get a 5th year. Gonna be a slow road unless these recruits next years are hidden 5* gems.
i do. think about what we donāt have next season that we will have next season: depth, experience, three point shooting. i agree that losing davis will hurt but i expect the combo of shepherd and young to pick up the slack. how much more competitive would this team be if we even had one consistent three point shooter, like vasic? we are building good habits tht i think will translate to next season.
I think we will lose 1-2 transfers since that is the way of college basketball now
agree but the big question is who? if it is mcgill, who has stepped his game up and we add a shotblocker, it might be for the best. we cannot martin, younger or mangum. i would like to keep robb. def. need to keep supica. donāt think bertram or vasic would leave at this point, nor would shepherd.
clt blames the refsā¦and MARGO
I love your optimism, but I just donāt see it. Where is the experience you speak of? McGill and Supica will be the most experienced players if they stick around. We will have 5 new freshmen with no college experience. These may be good players, but they will struggle. There is no doubt about that. You are putting a lot of faith that Shepherd and Young will bring the production of Davis. Shepherd averaged 4.3 points in 17 minutes as a FR and 2.3 points in 11.4 minutes as a SO at OU. There are no guarantees that he can average double figures here. Vasic is coming off of a knee injury and only has 1 season under his belt where he averaged 3.8 ppg. You are putting a lot of faith in another inexperienced team.
The recruiting class is nice to see, but he will need another strong recruiting class to play in the top half of CUSA and another strong class to compete with the top 2 or 3. He will need another one to win a regular season championship. The other teams donāt stay the same either. WKU looks like they are building back up and they are ahead. ODU doesnāt look like the are slowing down, and North Texas is surprising teams.
we have four freshmen who will have a full season of starting and playing big minutes who know the system and are ready to teach the new guys the system. also, we will be able to play aggressive defense for 40 minutes bc we will have depth which means we will not be tired in the second half. fwiw, wkuās current class is not ranked highly and even with their current nba roster, they are struggling a bit.
Ninerfan55, do you think we could be a ncaa tourney bubble team next year? Wanted to see if Santa refilled your green tint on your glasses this year.
Our freshman this year, specifically Martin and younger are good pieces but as of now still need a lot of work. And Iām sure our freshman this year āteachingā the system to next years freshman will pay huge dividends. 
iām detecting a bit of sarcasm. iām not saying where we finish next season except that i think we will be really tough and talented. that does not mean that we do not have any āwtfā moments or lose some games but i think we will take a big step forward. agree that our current freshmen have a lot of work to do, mainly with their outside shooting but they are all talented but they are also playing with one skilled upperclassman. supica is also playing out of position but he has looked pretty good this season but should be even better when he can play power forward.
I agree with NF55. Vasic, Shepard and Bertram will also benefit from having a year in the system in addition to an offseason with the current returning guys. Sanchez and team only had a couple of months with them before this season.
Donāt underestimate the value of competition for playing time which will make the entire team better. The entire group of freshmen, plus Shepherd and Vasic will give us a talented rotation of 10 players, without signing anyone else, which is still a possibility. Right now we are trying to have enough guys to finish a game.
I donāt know where that will put us in terms of wins or CUSA standing but I know we will be considerably better and heading in the right direction. I am optimistic.
I agree with 55. We have 7 playersā¦not bodiesā¦but players coming in next year. A couple of future studs (potential) and a tremendous transfer. CUSA is a dogsh!t league.
We finish top 4-5 in the league next year.
Noā¦that doesnāt equate to any buibble talk. But we will be NIT the following year and in the dance by year 3 with that lineup plus future recruits (which will be just as good if not better).
me and trleader agreeingā¦it must be christmas. if we had the typical price recruits, i would not be excited about next season. it was hard being excited about the garvinās and bryanāts of the world, with their big south/socon offers but our incoming class has three stars and good offers. this is coming off a long period of being crappy.
Agree 55
I donāt disagree that we will be a much improved team. However, we are currently 3-8. The team plays hard as hell every game and we have lost by double digits in 6 of the 8 losses. We lost by 20 in 3 of the 8 losses. Despite how hard we play, we still struggle. Next season we bring in 5 guys who have not played college ball. We get a transfer with two seasons under his belt, but didnāt make an impact on a rebuilding Oklahoma squad. We get Vasic back and he averaged a low ppg on a 6 win team.
Freshmen always struggle unless they are a lottery pick. There is a big jump from HS ball to college. Recruiting is based primarily on potential. These new guys need season 1 to work on eating right, gaining strength, and learning the system. Otherwise, they would be going to bigger programs. We have 3 star guys and that is great, but 3 star guys donāt show up and score in double figures. Look at Martin. He is strong and is a decent FT shooter for a FR. He plays high minutes, but averages only 9.5 ppg. In the last decade, it looks like only 3 players scored in double figures their freshmen season. They were Jon Davis, Adrien White, and Curran Scott. I believe those were Price recruits ironically.
I am going to say we win 10 to 15 games next season. This season I think we win 3 or 4 more to get us to 6 or 7 wins. We are really down as a program and you just donāt jump back up that quickly. CUSA is not a terrible league. We have been shafted at the end of the season, but teams in the NIT and NCAA have done well the past two seasons. It shows us winning 2 of 7 against Top 25 teams this season and I am guessing those games were either away or neutral courts. I do hope we return to relevance earlier than later, but coach Sanchez isnāt going to have us there next season.
I think 3 of yāall are just trolling me on here. top 4-5 in the league next year after losing our best player Davis off of a bad overall team? NIT in 2 years?
By the way, if cusa is a dog shit conference then we are one of the worst of the dog shit. Other teams are trying to improve too. Itās not like all other teams magically get worse and ours improves and we jump other dog shit teams. If our players get a year of experience, so do other players on other teams.
Stating the obvious but the recruits Sanchez brings in next year will show us how fast we improve going forward. Weāll see but until unproven Sanchez brings in the players, Iāll expect slower upward improvements than a lot of you.
THISā¦ Everyone keeps trying to improve. Sanchez needs to keep his recruiting game up and be ready to refill the transfer spots. If he is not trying to recruit over next yearās incoming class we will never get to where we need to be.
I think some of you are forgetting that the new guys THIS year should be improved NEXT year due to having to play/start this year. There is no doubt if Sanchez is anywhere near as good as we think he is that we could take a big jump next season. Getting to 7th place in C-USA should absolutely be a reasonable goal for year 2. Despite what has happened to our program lately it doesnāt have to take 3 -4 years to get from bad to mediocre.
Big jump next year after losing 40% of scoring? Seems unrealistic to me.