Clearly you forgot how the season ended last year? This team couldn't beat anybody. Is it realistic they are going to be this poor, no but they are relying on a lot of newcomers with limited or no college experience. To many people overvalued the loss of Al Nolen and just assume if he never got hurt we wouldn't have missed a beat. You have to be able to shoot free throws down the stretch to win.
So you're saying the fact that Nolen was present in both of our wins over top 10 teams, our win over West Virginia, and our narrow 3-point road loss to #2 Ohio State, and the fact that he was gone during our losses at Indiana, at Northwestern, vs Michigan at home, and both of our losses to Penn State were just a coincidence?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that with Nolen, we win the last five conference regular season games (at Penn State, Mich State, Mich, at Northwestern, Penn State) and we win at Indiana and beat Illinois at home, putting us at 13-5. Not only does Nolen give us at the very least a solid point guard and a great defender, but it also allows Hoff to play SG, where he is much more effective. Who knows, with home court advantage, we maybe could have beaten #1 Ohio State seeing as we only lost by 3 on the road, and Nolen was quite effective in that game. With Nolen, I think we would have won at least 4 more games (probably more), bringing us to 10-8 and the first time that Minnesota has ever gone dancing three consecutive years.
If Devoe Joseph had stayed, the loss of Nolen wouldn't have hurt the team quite so dramatically, but I think most would agree that Nolen's foot injury was the thing that really sent the season into a tailspin. We were a top 15 team with him, we were 9th in the Big Ten without him.
Fortunately this year though, we have point guards, so let's just pray that they don't get injured and then hopefully we'll do alright.
