I actually don’t understand Bonds redshirt unless he just isn’t there positioning wise on defense
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I think we would rather become a top 10 team than start pre season “ranked” top 10. I agree we shouldnt be ranked top 10 before playing the first two months or whatever
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Okay, I will say the controversial thing, then: It’s not just that I don’t think we are a top 10 team now. I don’t think we looked like a team that has top 10 potential.
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There’s a distinct possibility that coaches have a lot more data to go on than us fans, who have 1) highlight videos, 2) recruiting analyst assessments, and 3) chatter and rumors. So, in short, that’s how he redshirts.
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I agree with the take that we will be a little better than last year if we play the same guys. What I find odd is that all of the national analysts I have seen/heard NEVER mention our first years. I get that Tony tends to not play many first years, but it seems like every other top 75 freshman gets a shoutout for how much they might contribute to their respective team. Mick + Fish + Dunn is our secret sauce (I want to believe).
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I can think of something Tony could do that might raise their profile…
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It’s tough to give a shout out to freshmen players as difference makers when they go into a program that rarely puts freshmen in position to be difference makers. It can be easily seen in the stats that Bennett was much more willing to play younger guys (and a deeper rotation) earlier in his tenure than he is today.
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Is another reason to understand why national guys dont remember Kody Statman as being a top 7 rotation player for us when he is gone. How many people can tell you number 7 from Illinois for example? I surely cannot
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I think you’re likely right. And not saying this is exactly comparable but when we were playing in the Battle 4 Atlantis in 2018 I would have told you we weren’t a top 10 team, then we won the Natty. As long as you don’t have damaging loses, November isn’t very important.
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If (1) McKneely, Armaan, and others give us average to slightly above average 3 point shooting and (2) Reece and Kadin lead a top 10-15 defense we’ll compete for the ACC and reach the 3-4 seed range without any other improvements. For context, we have historically been near the very top of the ACC in 3 point shooting and a defense ranked 10-15 would be our third worst since 2014.
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Surely you see how people would view having us lower than every computer metric and human poll as your ‘optimistic’ take as a negative outlook lol
I can understand that other people see the world differently than me, but I don’t accept it. 
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I voted okay but of course that was relative to my expectations which are relatively high. I was aware that NCCU was not a dog, but I did not expect to be worried in the second half about winning the game (especially if we shot it well).
While a really good Franklin was great to see, I was somewhat disappointed in what I saw out of Van der Plas. It wasn’t that he was bad, because he did do some good things. But, he looks slow-footed to me and primarily a catch and shoot scorer. Guess I was hoping to see him just decide to score and go do it a few times.
Of course it is really too early to make many judgements about anybody, so we have to wait a few games. We certainly have some challenging ones coming up.
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BVP looks bigger to me now than when he torched us at Ohio. Less mobile for sure in watching one game
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I was never as high on BVP as most folks were. His history is that he’s a streaky scorer. He’ll probably help us a handful of games when he gets hot shooting the ball, but people talking about BVP and Gardner being effective on the floor at the forwards never made sense to me. Too slow.
I still would rather see Traudt get those minutes.
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I agree that BVP was a little slow of foot on some closeouts, but he went 2-for-4 from 3, 2 assists, 0 turnovers, and got a block and a steal. That’s a pretty successful outing in my book. I don’t think he profiles as a primary scorer and I’m not sure that he needs to be. He provides good spacing and is a willing and skilled passer. I’d be interested in seeing him do some work in the post, his shot profile last year was all at the rim or from 3, and at the rim he shot 65% with only 25% of the makes coming off assists, so he’s got some game down there.
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Jim Haney Root sounds about the same as I feel. Just has the same look and feel to me as the last few years. Although before Reeces foul trouble I was encouraged about a few things.
I will say while I feel like our ceiling isn’t as high as some think I also was ready to throw in the towel after the 2013-14 Tennessee game.
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Personally I think that’s a function of our offense more than anything. It seems like we rely on movement and crisp passing more than other teams in offense. We don’t always seem to do those two things well the past few years.
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When we were up by 16 in the 1st half, I told my friend that this is a game where the final score will look better than how the team played. (Of course then the second half came). Built the lead off of ticky tacky fouls and timely threes.
I was really hoping this team would player looser/with more swag than the last three seasons and it’s looking like more of the same.
Let’s see what happens tonight though. Not to start the talk but I would like to see Kihei play fewer than 25 min.
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Definitely get what you’re saying about being looser. I’m hopeful that NCCU was athletic and strong and just played well. A shaky game against this Monmouth team would be annoying, feel like we need a blowout to get ourselves confident before N Iowa and especially Baylor
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