Wet_Blanket_Guy
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It may surprise many of you, but I am not an unrealistic fan who thought we would get to the top half of the big ten this year. In starting this thread, I want to make it crystal clear in what my expectations were / are for this program for this season along with providing the opportunity for many others (clearly we have differing opinions out there) to state what they expected for this season.
In making my expectations crystal clear, I break it down into two categories; non-conference and B10.
Non-Conference:
TOTAL NON-CONFERENCE MARGIN -6 points | average Non-Conference KENPOM 206
Big10:
In non-conference, my expectations were:
For conference, my expectations for CBJ in his second season are as follows (which uses the below logic to justify it):
Going into the season, I was initially expecting to post a .333% B10 conference winning percentage. And for you that say that is unreasonable, I would counter and say that a record like that would get many coaches fired (lucky for CBJ it is only his second year so he may have time on his side). Also, the gophers have a pre-season ALL BIG TEN nominee in Battle, a former McDonalds All American (who is still slotted on many NBA mock drafts to get drafted in Garcia), and a guard in Cooper (while slow) who has 52 starts at Morehead State and was First Team All Ohio Valley Conference in 2022 (while ranking 7th in the country in assists @ 5.9 per game). Let's not completely say that the cupboard is bare...ok. Do they play some young guys, absolutely, but so does Purdue, who's freshman actually play a higher percentage of minutes compared to the Gopher freshmen.
But after seeing the non-conference and the Big10 teaser (Purdue and Michigan), I get the sense that we really only have shots against Northwestern and Nebraska - and both of these programs have looked really good lately (with the exception of Northwestern getting crushed by Ohio State last night.
My new expectations for full year record: 7 - 25 (6-6 non-conference) (1-19 conference)
The other bad, which we will need to address to hopefully get to .333% winning% in Conference:
What was everyone else's expectations?
In making my expectations crystal clear, I break it down into two categories; non-conference and B10.
Non-Conference:
- Cream-Puffs: (current KenPom ranking as of 1/2/2023):
- St. Francis Brooklyn #339 (6-7 overall) WON 72-54 - margin of victory 18 points
- Western Michigan #310 (4-9 overall) WON 61-60 - margin of victory 1 point
- Cal Baptist #176 (8-7 overall) WON 62-61 - margin of victory 1 point
- Arkansas Pine Bluff #355 (4-9) WON 72-56 - margin of victory 16 points
- Chicago State #314 (3-14 overall) WON 58-55 - margin of victory 3 points
- Central Michigan #270 (5-8 overall) WON 68-60 - margin of victory 8 points
- Potential Winnable Games:
- DePaul #144 (7-8 overall) LOST 69-53 - margin of defeat 16 points
- UNLV #84 (11-3 overall) LOST 71-62 - margin of defeat 9 points*
- Really Tough Opponents (really looking for moral victory):
- Virginia Tech #30 (11-3 overall) LOST 67-57 - margin of defeat 10 points*
- Mississippi State #39 (11-2 overall) LOST 69-51 - margin of defeat 18 points
TOTAL NON-CONFERENCE MARGIN -6 points | average Non-Conference KENPOM 206
Big10:
- Michigan #47 (8-5 overall) LOST 90-75 - margin of defeat 15 points
- Purdue #5 (13-0 overall) LOST 89-70 - margin of defeat 15 points
In non-conference, my expectations were:
- To go 5-0 against the cream-puffs (which we did) *expectations would've been 6-0 (and I fully expect we would've defeated Alcorn State). But my expectation would've been to see the depth of a B10 team (even though many on this site argue we are young *we are still a B10 team competing against much lower talent levels who should have maybe 1 or two players max who can compete) exert their will on these teams.
- Be within a margin of +/- 8 points on the Potentially Winnable Games (DePaul and UNLV) -
- DePaul has lost to Santa Clara, Oklahoma State, St John's (19), Duquesne (11), Northwestern (38), Providence (15), Creighton (15)
- Regarding the Really Tough Opponents, I think the goal margin should've been ~ 16 points (Mississippi State and VaTech both pride themselves on defense and play a slower style, especially MS State. Mississippi state really struggles to score, thus it is much harder for them to run up big margins of victory (yet they did it)
For conference, my expectations for CBJ in his second season are as follows (which uses the below logic to justify it):
Going into the season, I was initially expecting to post a .333% B10 conference winning percentage. And for you that say that is unreasonable, I would counter and say that a record like that would get many coaches fired (lucky for CBJ it is only his second year so he may have time on his side). Also, the gophers have a pre-season ALL BIG TEN nominee in Battle, a former McDonalds All American (who is still slotted on many NBA mock drafts to get drafted in Garcia), and a guard in Cooper (while slow) who has 52 starts at Morehead State and was First Team All Ohio Valley Conference in 2022 (while ranking 7th in the country in assists @ 5.9 per game). Let's not completely say that the cupboard is bare...ok. Do they play some young guys, absolutely, but so does Purdue, who's freshman actually play a higher percentage of minutes compared to the Gopher freshmen.
But after seeing the non-conference and the Big10 teaser (Purdue and Michigan), I get the sense that we really only have shots against Northwestern and Nebraska - and both of these programs have looked really good lately (with the exception of Northwestern getting crushed by Ohio State last night.
My new expectations for full year record: 7 - 25 (6-6 non-conference) (1-19 conference)
The other bad, which we will need to address to hopefully get to .333% winning% in Conference:
- Team assist to turn over ratio is 1.07 (total assists 172 / total turnovers 161)
- Team FT % ranked #350 in the country, yet we shoot the 137th most --we will have a few close games in conference and this will make or break us
- As a team we shoot 20.8 treys a game, yet only shoot 32.9% --> yet our opponents have shot 254 against us while shooting 33.5%
What was everyone else's expectations?
