Here's the deal, folks....

[DowntownDawg]

....we're just not that good. Because of our guards and a good defensive presence inside, we are capable of occasionally beating good teams, but over the course of the season, it will level out. We escaped against two bad teams at home, and lose to a bad one on the road today. With our nonconference start, we needed to go around 13-3 to 12-4 to get a good enough seed (sub 8) to advance. At this point, I'd say 10-6 is the ceiling, but 9-7 is a good possibility. We could easily go 0-3 over the next 3 games. Preseason hype was placed on Sidney and our SEC tournament run last year. Recall, we were not a tourney team until we beat UT.

We have not had an offensive inside presence since Rhodes left, and there's nobody on the horizon. Augustus could be it, but he thinks he is a guard, and Stansbury can't get through to him.

The effectiveness of Stansbury is decreasing year by year. Our talent level is down, and the talent we have is not being coached up.

 

[BewareOfMSUDawg]

although I am a little more optimistic - I think we could go 11-5 and will win a couple against the good teams, but that would mean no more bad losses which we always seem to do, so 10-6 is the most likely record.

Your assessment of us as a program is dead on - our main problem is that while we've won consistently, we have not taken the next step to become great. I know there's nothing new with that statement, but we've gotten a bit stale as a program, and it doesn't look like we'll be making a move to overcome that anytime soon. Just think of next year with an inside game of Lewis and Riek. Maybe Osby or Augustus will step up, but they're not really players to rely on for an inside game.

 

[Frances Drebin]

...may even win the game, and everyone will be back on here crowing about the greatness of Stans. But they will play us straight up man without any gimmicks, and this will allow our athletes to be athletes. Games like today, where teams mix defenses and throw in wrinkles and gimmicks are the games we always struggle with because our coach hasn't proven that he has the ability to make adjustments and take advantage of what the defense is giving him. Stans should be licking his chops when he sees defenses pressuring like that, because it should mean we're on the other end dunking if we take care of the ball.

 

[Hanmudog]

(OK my sabbatical is over)
Our preseason ranking was based on Riek and Sidney emerge as good players as well as Kodi being worth a ****. None of that has happened so we are stuck with last year's team. We will not get a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAAs because we are not good enough. It is that simple. We will probably make it as a 9 or 10 seed unless Kodi and Ravern get their heads out of their asses and Rick finds a way to get our offense moving.

 

[DowntownDawg]

....our best teams were when we had a good offensive big man to feed the ball inside to. We had a run of those with Austin, Roberts, and Senior year Rhodes. Although we had some very good guards in those years (Zimmerman, Bowers, Gordon), we were strong inside - scoring, defending, and rebounding. Since Rhodes left, we are very good defensively with Varnado, but we have no offensive presence. What's left is a team with no offensive identity that thinks it needs to fire threes up there to win.

Where is the man who left his vacation to recruit Lawrence Roberts? Barring Renardo playing next year, we don't have anything to look forward to. You're right. We are stagnant.

 

[DowntownDawg]

...and that's where the line is. It will frustrate many to lose on a Sunday to a 1 seed. Right now, that is the ceiling to our season. That's why people are so upset.

 

[Barkman Turner Overdrive]

[No message]

 

[00Dawg]

on the program argument when we went 15-15 a few years ago, but Stansbury picked us back up and into the NCAA tournament just two years later. We'll have to miss the tournament to argue against an improvement from last year.

Anyway, I'm constantly amazed by how up and down our fan base is during the season year after year after year. Maybe it's about time I stop being amazed by that.

 

[DowntownDawg]

....we've made the tournament a few times since then, but made very little noise because of our seeding.

This year was an opportunity to change that, and it's all but gone right now. We made up for a bad loss to Rider in Oxford. We just erased that victory today.