New players

[KnoxLikeUs]

Well having a roster featuring 7 McDonald’s All-Americans in addition to 6 4-star players the odds of those high expectations being met are very favorable.
CKC checked off every single box through recruiting after an outstanding year 1 campaign where that 2024-2025 team built a solid foundation by having an incredible season.

I have High expectations. We do have a final 4 roster as does 6 or 7 other teams. Top 10 rosters are loaded. It will come down to health and teams that play there best in Tournament. In CHRIST Alone

 

[KTrain]

I guess we do that because fan forums are unserious gathering places meant for fanatics for their team to have fun "talking" with others about their team. Fanatics are often spending a lot of time hoping and wishing and getting excited about their team's next season, and so that ends up a lot of time becoming exuberant rah-rahs and wildest-dreams-posting that hurts noone. Because this isn't serious business in here. It's kinda fun once a person stops worrying whether the hopes and dreams of others are realistic or not. If we had to wait to see how it all worked out, there'd be no reason to have these fan forums.

I agree, it's what a forum is about. Most of the time the expectations are right on or close to right with an average of the projections complied. The outlier is when a team way under performs the ppl trying to be way over conservative cherry pick those teams to make their point. Then go back to wringing their hands. Like you said it's not serious business and just fun to project, whether you are over optimistic or a long-time pessimist.

 

[KnoxLikeUs]

It’s official!

The #1 transfer portal and #1/#2 high school recruiting classes are GBO solid!

 

[ttharp]

Yep, and I’ll spin my broken record again and say that getting to the Final Four often takes quite a bit of luck, too. There have probably been fewer than 10 teams ever that didn’t need the assist of super-good luck for them and a bit of bad luck for one or two other contenders, to get over that hump.

I believe this year’s team has the talent to easily reach the Sweet 16, and have an above average chance of being good enough for E8. The Final Four? I think we may have enough talent — though I worry a bit about not having above-average height in the post — to get there, but we’re likely to be a team that needs a lot of luck in the NCAA Tournament to do it. It’s not as insane a thought this year, and to me that shows a huge step up for the program.

Agreed.

We needed some luck to win the last two natty’s in 07 and 08.

In 07, we played Marist and Ole Miss to get to the FF because they upset two of the top seeds in our regional. Got a huge break there. We then got the big win vs UNC to play Rutgers in the championship game. For those that don’t remember, Rutgers was a 4 seed that beat Duke who was favored to win it all that year. That’s the same Duke team that jumped out to a 18-0 lead at TBA

A year later, Candace dislocated her shoulder in the E8 game. In the FF, we needed a miracle offensive putback by Alexis Hornbucke to advance. We faced Stanford who upset UConn. I don’t think we would’ve beaten UConn with Candace playing through an injury.

You definitely need a little luck. And good coaches take advantage of it.

 

[stllvf]

Yep, and I’ll spin my broken record again and say that getting to the Final Four often takes quite a bit of luck, too. There have probably been fewer than 10 teams ever that didn’t need the assist of super-good luck for them and a bit of bad luck for one or two other contenders, to get over that hump.

with a smile I agree totally, however many of the young regulars on the board have not encountered the metaphor of a "broken record" although many follow it.

 

[VA_VOLFAN]

Last year's early schedule made good sense, what with a new and unusual system to be learned.

This year... well, we still have lots of new players--and many freshmen--so how far up would you ramp the challenge this November-December?

I'm probably being too cautious, but I would wait 'til third or fourth season to start making out a Pat-style, front-loaded, tourney-expectant teams schedule that challenges from the get-go. But even as I say that, I can hear CKC saying, "We intend to win now!"

i think you pick up the schedule next year while we still have Coop on the squad. We know the SEC is always gonna boost the SOS and NET just with the quality of opponents.

I would love to get Duke on the schedule. I think she should always play at least one opponent from each of the Power conferences to have them on the schedule. I’d also love to see us play a team like Michigan and putting UNC back on the schedule would be fun! From the big 12 would love to play baylor or even Iowa State to make us guard shooters