Scholarship table
2. Other than Kolek and Joplin, the entire team needs to improve its free throw shooting. I know there are those who believe free throws don't matter, but I am not in that camp and never will be. They don't matter when you are beating someone by twenty points. But, in close games, they matter a lot.
Offensively, the main improvement I'm hoping for from Joplin is that he's not a ball-stopper. I'm not very worried about his ability to score; he's gonna have some games with big numbers next season.
OK, I am going to explain this again.When people say "free throws don't matter," it means that free throw percentage is not a statistically significant variable to a team's performance.Of course its better to make free throws than not. And yes it does mean that in close games it could matter. But over the course of a season, there are other things that will be more important to team success than free throw percentage. Just doing a quick look, I believe only 5 of the top 20 teams in free throw percentage even made the NCAA tournament.
I think we all agree that the starting lineup this year will be Oso, Tyler, Stevie, Kam, and Joplin. I think we all also agree that Ben Gold slides into the Joplin sixth man slot. Chase Ross will undoubtedly get more minutes this season.
Rebound better and get to the line more. That's how we'll improve as a team.
I think they need to rebound less
No doubt the team will take more losses this season.
The pre-con schedule is tough and the BE itself will be a significantly harder league this year with significant improvement from Villanova, GT, and STJ and with Seton Hall and Prov still being competitive. 29 wins is not in the cards this year even though the team itself may be better. It should all work itself out with a very solid tournament seed (though not a 2) and a solid tournament showing.
REBOUNDING is key here.
4. Oso needs to have a reliable shot from fifteen feet. Certainly we all know this.
I think our seed will be the same or better. The way I see it we can win the Big East and in fact should be favorites. That's a 2 seed at the worst and probably a 1 seed. I could see the record being worse but there is a decent chance I think we are ranked in the top 5 all year.
I don’t think he ‘needs’ to, but I think he will surprise us. Last off-season I said I expected Oso to be more involved in initiating the offense. I don’t think even one person agreed with me here. This year, I expect him to extend his game out to the 12’ -17’ range.