10 -Northwestern
11 - Nebraska
12 - Minnesota
13 - Penn State
14 - Rutgers[/QUOTE]
Last place is a realistic prediction. I don’t expect a significant improvement in win-loss record until the 2016-17 season, and then ONLY if we can keep our key players from transferring, a pattern which has killed RU MBB for years. I give EJ, Shoes and any others involved great credit for landing a solid PG prospect like Sanders and a promising 4 in Freeman, and other players. This speaks well for the future, and for the first time we have some depth, some size, and hopefully, some better defensive players and a couple of scorers to juice up our anemic offense. However, we must be realistic (not negative, just pragmatic) about the fact that we have lost our two best players to graduation and, more important, that this team is extremely inexperienced and for the most part hasn’t played together as a unit.
Consider this: 6 of our 11 scholarship players have never played a minute of basketball at RU, and overlapping with this stat, 5 who have never played a minute of division I college ball. We have 4 players who have only one year of experience. With the talent level at a Kentucky, Ohio State or Duke, a team that raw might still be a top ten power. At RU, the only way we can be competitive is to have a unit of decent players who have a lot of experience playing together, i.e. a couple of seasons learning to play the RU system, play in synch, employ individual strengths to the max , and work out lineups and rotations. I also think that the OOC schedule is tough, in spite of some fans rationalizing the situation by saying “well, they are middle-of-the-pack teams from big conferences…” Look at the teams; there is hardly an opponent or possible opponent who won’t be the favorite (yes, I know we beat Clemson down at Littlejohn last year, but it could be a stretch to do that again early in this season) against RU.
Here’s what I think is likely to happen. I don’t see more than 8 or 9 wins, but the quality and competitiveness of the losses will be key. If RU MBB keeps almost all of the OOC games close, and if we show that we are gradually getting better as the team gets some seasoning going into the B1G league games, our reputation won’t suffer that much. But we need to show real progress, avoid blowouts to conference powers, and not regress the way we did the last couple of seasons. If we can just play respectably, I would hope that we can avoid damage to the program’s reputation and wholesale transfers out of the program. Then, perhaps we can add several more wins next year and be seen as an up and coming team that is clearly progressing upward toward the middle of the pack in the tough B1G.
