It’s way too early time! (Early 22-23 top 25s)

Parrish kicks us off:

Borzello:
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/page/earlytop25040422/arkansas-razorbacks-no-1-way-too-early-top-25-college-basketball-rankings-2022-23

Goodman:

Rothstein:

DeCourcy:

I can’t find Torvik’s early projections yet. Happy off-season!

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Rothstein has Gardner and Kihei gone but “Cody Stattman” still here…. Excellent research quality

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The longer I’ve followed college basketball the more I realize that most of these talking heads are clowns. Some, like Matt Norlander, seem like they are at least trying.

Who do folks on the forum follow/respect?

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And “McNeely” incoming :roll_eyes:

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Yeah Rothstein is lazy. Just noticed scrolling down he had Elijah Weaver in Dayton’s starting lineup when he’s transferring out and a kid on SLU who’s in the portal. And those are just a few I looked at.

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Rothstein definitely lost his luster for me.

At the start of the season, he whined on Twitter about us being in the Preseason AP Top 25 but not the Hokies.

He’s an AP voter. So I pulled up his poll and he had us ranked but not the Hokies.

Whatever, man.

He’s just a hype artist and recycler of his own cliches and not someone serious.

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Goodman has Moore playing for Nova next year coming off a torn Achilles … I wouldn’t expect him back until 23/24

I’m usually the last one to defend Rothstein, because I don’t particularly love him (I think he gets scoops because he does coaches’ dirty work, like putting kids on blast), but I think (1) his site is a one man operation and (2) what in the world is he doing trying to rank 45 teams? He’s just a try hard who doesn’t always succeed. (In other words, it’s not laziness, it’s too much ambition relative to his resources).

But in general, these columns are really tough. It’s always hard to predict the future, and even more so with all the player movement.

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I think where Rothstein goes wrong is that he doesn’t have Ali Ali and Jayden in the starting line up. And he doesn’t have Sean McNeil and Narchad Omier on the bench for us. And he doesn’t have us as the preseason #1 team.

More seriously, if we only add one transfer and run it back we are most likely a bubble team again with the upside of making an ACC title run based on how McKneely pans out in year one.

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Titus and Tate are honestly the only college basketball media folks I care about. Tate might be a little tough to listen to for the next few weeks because he’s a UNC fan, haha, but they’re the best. They don’t pretend to know what they don’t know and are just two dudes enjoying college basketball. All the other college basketball media folks I pretty much ignore.

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Seth Davis ($)

I like different guys for different things.

Sperber is great for Xs and Os.

Norlander and Parrish are good for big picture stuff (e.g., following the FBI scandal)

Titus and Tate are very entertaining

Vecenie does NBA draft stuff, which is I think the best way to track the really good talent

Three Man Weave are really good for gambling stuff and following the non Power 6

Dauster has a good mix of game breakdown while still doing a good overview.

There’s a lot of good stuff out there, IMO.

Then there’s all the old school analytical stuff like Kenpom and Torvik and newer school stuff like evanmiya.com and all sorts of other stuff that @hoopsandhoos would know

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I know the story with his family members getting sick, but does anybody know what the deal is with Dawson Garcia at UNC? I expected him to be back from them next year, but they’ve hinted during the tournament and now with preseason Top 25s that he’s not expected back there

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Torvik has us 36th. If you add Jayden as a returner we move up to 18th. If you add Jayden and Kihei, we move up to 15th.

https://barttorvik.com/rostercast.php?team=Virginia&run=1&player=&transfers=&seniors=&recruits=&everyone=

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Rumor is that yes, very real family issues BUT that he was also a locker room cancer. There was a presser during/before the tourney with a bunch of players and coaches and they asked if anyone had talked to Dawson and no one had. I think it was reflective of how disconnected he was from the team. I don’t expect him back (but I have no inside info).

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Gleeson seems highest on Hoos (17)

Torvik :heart: continuity

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I fiddled with it a bit. Adding Jayden (according to the system) helps a lot because A) the system thinks he’ll be pretty good (not great, but better than anyone but Reece!! and Shedrick), B) takes minutes away from Dunn and McGharen (who it thinks would be the worst players on the team), C) interestingly the system thinks Jayden makes everyone else on the team a little better. Shedrick goes from 118 to 120, Taine goes from 109 to 110, Beekman!! goes from 112 to 113, etc.

Adding Kihei in as well (in addition to Gardener) further improves the team, but only slightly, and mostly because of C. The system thinks Clark is basically even with Franklin and only slightly better than McKneely or Bond. But the system thinks adding Clark will make everyone else slightly better (smaller margin than with Gardner) and that’s essentially where all the improvement comes from.

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Yeah, it’s admittedly not a perfect algorithm, especially projection playing time and effectiveness for freshman. On the flip side, it does give a decent idea of where we can expect to be in both his and KenPom’s ratings at the beginning of the season, which I always find interesting.

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Yeah, plus, I’d kind of forgotten about McGharen being on the team. The system didn’t forget!

I think uva is puzzling to project for next year. On one hand, we will have an old, experienced roster with several starters who we anticipate making big strides (Shedrick + Armaan and Gardner having system experience). We also have a highly touted recruiting class that - on paper - addresses a number of needs: McKneely brings shooting and packline experience at the 2, Dunn/Bond project to be bouncy athlete wing stoppers, and Traudt provides depth at either big spot. The big question is how do those rotations end up? In one world we trot out Reece, Armaan, Taine, Gardner, Shedrick with backups of Kihei, McKneely, Traudt, and Caffaro rounding out a 9 man rotation. Dunn and Bond could take traudt’s minutes based on Match-ups. On the other hand, kihei + Armaan + Gardner for 35 minutes each in the starting lineup seems much less promising. If the Italy trips works well and we have a deep lineup with a talent infusion, this team could be in the 10-20 rankings, if we have another disappointing set of rotations it will be a 10 seed bubble team again

Edit: and by disappointing rotations, I don’t mean Tony makes awful decisions; rather whatever factors coalesce such that we are playing a 7 man rotation when we have - on paper - plenty of talent to play beyond that

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I wouldn’t mind a top 7 rotation of:
In order of playing time…
Reece
Isaac M
Taine Murray
Isaac Traudt
Gardner
Shedrick
Franklin/Bond/Dunn - depending on matchups

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