I guess you can't say that prediction isn't filled with some hot takes!

Sleeper Team is Rhody? I think Archie has underperformed so far. Even though we finished last in the standings last year, URI still finished below GW in KenPom. Sebastian Thomas boomeranging back to URI feels meh, Diboundje would have been more exciting prior to his stop at East Carolina, House is a high volume guy. I like David Green, Jamarques Lawrence, and Cam Estevez (they are also bringing in a Mount St. Joe's guy as a freshman - JB's school) but I'm not seeing a ceiling above 10 right now.

Shulga as player of the year is the boring "best player on best projected team" pick. I'm not a Lange guy by any means, but Reynolds deserves some recognition here. VCU has often times not been the team with the best individual player, but that hasn't mattered when they have been the best team (I think back to Ace from a couple years ago somehow getting it over Daron which made no sense). Even as someone who likes what Shulga brings player of the year seems to go a bit too far. I personally think if you finish top 4, you can have a player of the year winner.

As for the standings, I didn't like the VCU as #1 pick at first, but:
- I can't trust Lange to deliver for SJU
- Schertz was a home run hire for SLU, but too many people are picking a team that was close to finishing last a season ago to be #1. They are certainly towards the top though.
- Loyola has a high floor with good defense, but I don't trust their offense enough for them to be #1.
- Dayton lost a lot. They will always be towards the top by default (getting Posh and Zed Key was huge) but their ceiling doesn't feel as high as a season ago.

Overall, I'm curious how closely these rankings correlate with NIL money.

I think UMass at 6 is a bit high given what they lost (Cohen + Cross) but Martin has a high floor as always.

GMU feels undervalued and Skinn did a great job last year. I'm surprised they have no players on the first team honestly.

Duquesne feels a bit low as well with all they are bringing in, but chemistry is a question mark + I don't know how a new coach will work right away.

I don't really know where to put St. Bona. Schmidt is another high floor guy/great coach in general, but I don't know that their budget/NIL is great relative to the top of the league and I wonder if that hurts them long term. I like their guards and hope Noel has a nice year as the guy up front.

I've seen Richmond pretty low on the few rankings lists of the A10 this season and I feel like that might be a mistake after what happened last year? Obviously King came out of nowhere but I think if there is a team that is deserving of the sleeper team label it's them (or Mason).

Sadly I think #12 is pretty fair for GW, although there is a lot of upside. I am still concerned about the wing position without Garrett and hope we can get someone late just for depth purposes at the 3 which a bit of height (around 6'7" or so). To my knowledge, most of this month is a dead period so I'm curious what Nessah is looking to do.

Davidson/La Salle/Fordham are likely towards the bottom when it comes to NIL.

The Wildcats have continuity which should help, but the roster just lacks dynamic players in my opinion. Hopefully they can shoot better from 3 this year which will help a lot.

The Explorers still have Fran which should keep them from finishing last, but Brantley + Brickus were just fantastic and I don't know that the guys coming from the portal can make up for that.

Fordham is another team where it's hard to pick them dead last based off what Urgo has done but I look at the roster and just say "meh". Tripp could be a breakout player and Richardson could explode but I don't get overly excited looking at the roster.
 

I am very confident Buchanan will be first team so long as he stays healthy. I wouldn't trade him for Shulga. 

I like Reynolds for POY provided that he leads the Hawks to a double bye (or in serious contention of one).  Am not sure who the truly great players are in the league this year which makes putting up numbers in an "empty calorie" sort of way a more viable avenue to POY as opposed to having to go up against a Daron Holmes caliber of player.

AT Hiker wrote:

I am very confident Buchanan will be first team so long as he stays healthy. I wouldn't trade him for Shulga. 

I don’t know if our record will be good enough for him to be first team, but I agree with you that I wouldn’t trade him for Shulga.  Not many players in the league I would trade him for (especially if we knew we could keep him more than his year).  Guy is unguardable at the college level, and he may get even better.

Article about DBJ and Jacoi: https://www.midmajormadness.com/2024/8/31/24231884/sophomores-darren-buchanan-jr-jacoi-hutchinson-dynamic-duo-george-washington-chris-caputo

GW0509 wrote:

Article about DBJ and Jacoi: https://www.midmajormadness.com/2024/8/31/24231884/sophomores-darren-buchanan-jr-jacoi-hutchinson-dynamic-duo-george-washington-chris-caputo

Thank you for posting 509.   Traditionally, players seem to make the biggest jump their 2nd year.    Hoping that is true not only from Jacoi and Darren, but I am expecting that sophomore jump also from Trey Autry and even Zam (who is big, seems to have a nice 3 point touch and never gets mentioned).   (It would have been nice to see what we could have gotten from  second year Garrett Johnson, a wonderful 3 point shooter and a decent rebounder who really needed to develop the other aspects of his game, especially defense and inside scoring).  Also curious about Chrisian Jones, who was (I believe) our highest rated recruit last season and who sat for developmental reasons.   This is another name who never gets mentioned.     In the end,  our won/loss record will be determined on defensive improvement.   Admittedly it was nice to watch us score 80 points on such a frequent basis, but in the  words of Ken Beatrice, "offensive puts fannies in the seat (well, maybe not in our case) but defense wins games.   The one thing I have leared from last season and which I will try to prevent from happening this season is not to get too high on the team by watching us beat up on a bunch of OOC patsies, only to finish dead last in the conference.  I dread thinking what happens to the program if last season should repeat itself.