Maybe some were but there was a lot of glowing praise from national announcers who did our games in the games I watched.
Even dukies Bilas and J Will
I guess fans can focus more on the negative naysayers or the positive glowers.
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Land De Ridder and I’ll predict Top 25.
But it’s understandable that we’re off the radar. All that stuff we did under Tony is completely irrelevant to the current squad.
(Unless Mike Curtis and Ethan Saliba were the key to our success… 
)
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We’re going to be hard to predict. If the pieces come together, I legitimately think we can be a top 10 team based on the talent we have. That said, I’m no fool and understand it will take time for these guys to get comfortable playing together and it’s certainly possible they never reach the potential of all of the individual pieces. Good thing is there aren’t many teams that return 3+ starters so much of our competition will be dealing with similar issues.
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Yep, really no way to know til a month or so into the season. As has been said many times, really hard to project ‘up’ some of the mid majors. Odds tell us one of White, Lewis and Tillis will be a bust. I personally think we are gonna be pretty good. Oh and we have to stay freakin healthy
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I think people (fairly) have a wait and see attitude with portal rosters in general
Best portal classes last year per On3 + final KenPom rank
Louisville - #28
Kansas - #24
West Virginia - #53
Indiana - #45
Nebraska - #46
Mississippi State - #33
Texas Tech - #9
Georgia - #38
Michigan - #21
Providence - #96
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Agree - so basically the same as literally every other team. Right now, I hate Rider. They stink. Worse than Reed Bailey.
I can’t imagine the anguish some of you guys would have if you had to root for a legitimately hated program, like Duke.
Right now, generally, people don’t think of UVa hoops that much anymore, which is my least favorite.
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To get a rough sense of our roster with the euros I added the following to Torvik’s rostercast:
- Malik Thomas (hasn’t yet updated to include him)
- Baba Miller (ranked 66 transfer, as a comp for Grünloh)
- Ven Lubin (ranked 92 transfer, as a comp for De Ridder)
That brought us to 38th overall, which feels close to right. I think Miller and Ven Lubin are probably slightly conservative comps for De Ridder and Grünloh so would guess we’d be closer to 30th overall if Torvik had a way to forecast euros.
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Just as a counter example, Randolph Childress is one of those national guys. He does a lot of Field of 68, and does color for various ACC games.
He loved Tony and the Hoos, and for obvious reasons, has even more fondness for the Odom family. On a recent podcast, he basically said he couldn’t be unbiased about my guy Ryan, or something like that.
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Another counter example: this Nick Kalinowksi guy who keeps telling everyone our international guys are awesome is a double Hoo. I think he likes us!
John Hollinger is a prominent hoops voice and tweets about us a lot. Do you think he’s tweeting about a lot of other teams that haven’t won a game in the tournament recently?
I apologize: I just get triggered by this “it’s the media’s fault” stuff w/r/t college hoops…
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Sorry, y’all were talking about Malik Thomas. Please proceed.
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Yes please!!
Here’s the list out of the 16 NBA playoff teams who have been free of major injuries or illness these playoffs - to a starter or major rotation guy:
Indiana, New York, OKC, Minnesota
and Houston - which lost to a fully healthy Warriors team in 7.
So 11 of the 16 didn’t have a full healthy chance in the playoffs.
Weird how it affects winning.
That’s why I love the depth as long as they all get to play consistently so we don’t have deer in headlights when they are needed.
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Will say this…we are going to come out of the portal season better “on paper” than I thought was possible.
My expectation was for Odom to hopefully build a team that could get on the bubble. In reality, he built a team where it would honestly be a little dissapointing if we’re on the bubble. I fully expect to make the tournament in Year 1 but am also not delusional enough to think that’s a foregone conclusion.
Plenty of teams completely flip their rosters, bring in lots of talent, and still don’t perform well. But I’m confident in Odom’s coaching ability and his track record for doing this.
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For the moment, I don’t think it is reasonable to say Virginia is a contender, and I don’t think it is reasonable to say that Virginia isn’t a contender. There are way too many unknowns about the upcoming season to make any predictions. And, while I put only a limited amount of stock in the rankings published on the internet, Virginia’s transfer haul isn’t viewed as that great. It’s nice, but… If you were to go by the amount of Kool-Aid being consumed by some here, you would think UVa was ranked in the Top 10. Lastly, I don’t think we’re going to have a good idea about this edition of the 'Hoos unitl after Christmas.
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Yeah, the addition of European pros makes things even more complicated. They have to adjust to a whole new country and not just another team. It’s not that I don’t think they can adjust. It’s that everyone else is new to the team too, so everything just compounds and adds on top of each other. The coaching staff will need to quickly get this team to gel together.
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People always say things like this but keep in mind we are still arguing about how good we were in 20-21.
When are we going to have a good idea about how good the 20-21 Hoos were?
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Then, again, it is worth noting those who are still struggling with that season. Wasn’t an issue for me! 
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They’re also going to be like “Wait, I actually have to go to class? That’s like a real thing? I thought that was a joke. I haven’t had to read a book in years!”
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I feel like 73CAV says this same exact thing every year lol
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Malik was 9th in the country in made Free Throws last year… that’s the thing I’m looking for because that can alleviate droughts.
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That’s because I do say it nearly every year, or every year this decade. And I think I’ve been right more often than not!
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