Very pleased with the core six returnees !   Add in a few serviceable portal pick-ups and some decent freshman recruits, and we should be better than we were this past year.   Another 20+ win season with an improved overall quality of opponent in the OOC, and over .500 in Conference play should be a reasonable expectation - and a successful season.  Breakout player - Trey Autry; All A-10 - Castro.  How Garrett comes back will be a major key.    If he and/or CJ regress significantly from past performance and what is expected (think Jun this year), it could be a long year.   

Believe Mayhem speaks for many re our conflicted feelings about Jun's performance this year.   His character makes us all proud to have him represent our School, but his fall off in performance from last year has indeed been precipitous.  For me, an area of equally serious regression (in addition to his ability to score in the paint) is his 3 point shot.   Unless I'm guilty of serious memory loss, I recall him as one of our more reliable 3-point shooters last year.   He's been without doubt our worst this year.   I, too, hope many of his problems stem from that lingering injury, and that he'll bounce back nicely next season.

Castro as second team all-Conference.  If Jones qualifies, second team all-Rookie.  Can't see any others with a legitimate shot.

I see it as more a "we owe them one big-time" for the bitter loss at Richmond earlier in the season.   We should want to avoid being punked on our home court by an inferior team that embarassed us earlier.   If we have any true fighting spirit in us, we gotta be up for this one from the opening tip.   Revs win by 6-10 pts with Castro continuing his outstanding play.

Castro has indeed been terrific and critical to any success we're having in Conference play so far.  Frankly, his performance during the OOC did not inspire much confidence, and I could never have predicted how dominant and effective he'd be.   In fact, I'd have thought the center position would be a notable weakness for us this year.   It is clearly now our strength.  Jun, Trey and Jacoi still seem to be working their way back to somewhere near 100% (very slowly).  Drumgoole's several hot games seem to have inspired the opposition to view him as our biggest offensive weapon, and someone who they have to key on.   He seems to draw very tough and close man-to-man defense every game lately, and he is fortunate if he gets 1 or 2 more-or-less open looks a game from 3pt range.   Early on, he seemed to have lots of open 3's available, and was hoisting up what I thought were way too many unsuccessful 3pt attempts.   When he finally started to make them, the other teams reacted with alacrity.  Overall team defense has somehow morphed into a strength as the offense declined a bit  Happy with how hard the team plays and their consistency of effort.   Agree with CC's observation in his presser today that we can compete with/beat anyone in the A-10 on any given night - which has not always been the case in recent years.

I think the off weekend should be helpful, and I'm hoping to see a healthy Jun come back and play one of his best games vs the Dukes.  Hope Trey is ready to go as well.   We need his offensive penetration skills and all-around hustle - and not-so-much the 3-point shooting.   Only when wide open please.   Hope Hansen and Jones continue to play additional, meaningful minutes in a thoughtfully revamped offense.  The boys should have just a bit of confidence and swagger after their last 2 games and should use it to dominate the Dukes.   Revs by 7.  

I really believe that the key to our improved play the last two games does have something to do with Jun not being available.   Specifically, CC cannot design his offense around Jun if Jun is in street clothes, so some other players must, perforce, play more minutes and assume more meaningful offensive roles.   Cases in point: Nessie and Bevins get some minutes on the court and do pretty well, the offense flows through Hansen - who moves the ball around  and distributes much more than Jun, Autry's playing time increases, Jones assumes a starting role, Drumgoole gets more shots within the new offensive scheme, and somehow the spacing improves for Castro who asserts himself more on the rebounding and inside defense.    All of which is to say that hopefully when Jun returns CC will tweak his role to fit in better with his newfound and more flexible offensive (and defensive) scheme, thus relieving Jun of the pressure of having the offense always flow through him.   I believe Jun might even raise his ppg average under such a newly tweaked scheme.

Ralphie wrote:

Nothing short of a total start-to-finish blowout of Dayton on Saturday will wash away the rancid dregs of last night's defeat to the A-10's second worst team after leading by 13 with under 10 minutes to play.   There can be no positive team takeaways from last night's debacle.  Drumgoole's unbelievable second half 3-pt shooting was a strictly individual career anomaly never to be replicated.

. 
Well, thank you gents for washing away those rancid dregs.   Can't help but think the very audacity of mentioning a blowout of Dayton was somehow good karma.   Nothing but positives to take away from this one !

For me, 10 in-conference wins would constitute a successful year and marked improvement/growth.   It would also get us to 20 wins overall - a nice accomplishment.   It won't be easy, but its doable and a nice challenge for the team.

Good to see Trey have a breakout game - we needed it from him tonight.  Still some concerns about our aggressiveness rebounding.   We most always seem to get bested on hustle plays and tough, contested rebounds.   Clearly something to work on.   While our overall defense was solid, we did benefit quite a bit from what I believe was an unusually poor shooting night by the Black Knights.   I'm with Poog in that I enthusiastically support OOC home and homes with ANY of the Military Academies, whom I feel are unusually good draws here at the Smitty - a stone's throw from the Pentagon and in a town with lots of Military presence.   I also think we should more aggressively pursue some of the top Ivies for OOC home and homes.