Everyone here wants to believe that MU is better than 7th place finish that most outside prognosticators are predicting.
While the prognosticators might turn out to be right, I also recall they picked our boys to win the BE one year when we had no serviceable point, simply because we had gone to the E8 the year before. Most often they seem to look at where a team finished the year before and make a one place in the standings adjustment.
Reasons I am optimistic we'll do better than expected:
* The Freshman are now Sophomores (see McGuire, Al)
* Haanif is a stud in the making. If the Dayton scrimmage is any indication, he has added an array of offensive moves to his go-to moves. If he can improve his turnovers to something on the order of not completely embarrassing he will be our best player this year
* JJJ can continue his trajectory from the 2nd half last year. Once he bought into the system, only took the "easy" 3 pointers, and stopped taking himself out of position defensively going for steals he played to his recruiting ranking
*Duane is due for a bounce back. Even an incremental improvement on both sides of the ball will make him extremely valuable and should be easily in reach now that with all the firepower we should have he can afford to be more selective
*Sam at the 4. I know expectations need to be tempered because he is a Frosh, but I have a feeling he is going to plug a big hole just by focusing on D and rebounding and tossing in the occasional point. He can play the role JFB did his sophomore year
We'll see fairly soon.
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