My God, just stop.  

Why not just say that 9th-12th would exceed expectations?  That way, as long as Fordham doesn't beat us out, all will be right with the program as we will have met if not exceeded expectations.

Fortunately, most of us want better for this program.  Go ask Jamion how he would personally feel about an 11th place finish.  Go ask any player how they would feel about an 11th place finish.

The absolute, most modest goal possible for this year's team would be a 10th place finish which would keep them out of the opening day of the tournament..  Playing in the 8-9 game would be aspirational yet realistically attainable. 

Consensus, prediction after prediction has GW near the bottom of the league, as one would expect.

So placing several spots higher than that, would be exceeding expectations.  

Look I understand predictions are for fun and no matter the state of the team its what fans do. For me they have been so bad, so weak since 2018 that I have no idea where rock bottom is. To steal something I read in the Athletic with a change in team name to fit GW.

"“Rock bottom is not a place, it’s a feeling. It’s a state of mind that things cannot possibly get any worse because this has to be as bad as it gets. There’s a certain optimism attached to rock bottom, the knowledge that this is as low as you’ll go and the only way forward is upward. It gets better, right? But life doesn’t always work out that way – it can always get worse. There’s a level below rock bottom, a place of familiarity where the lowest of lows is nothing new and brand new lows are met with numb resignation. Rock bottom has optimism. This place does not, it’s a dark abyss and it’s where GW Men's Basketball Team is."

Can it get better this season? Only if team defense really improves and I just don't see it.

Rationally, GW doesn't owe us ANY basketball success. Especially during an interim  with all the disruption and turmoil in society making things really hard on universities. Even more so with the Power 5 and the transfer rules tilting against all but the Top 50-60 schools. Still a fan. Still contribute and pay for tickets, so as an irrational fan I'm in no mood for happy talk. Improved play 100% what I want like everyone else. Happy talk from JC or anyone else not in the mood. Right now GW is still searching for rock bottom IMO. 

Improvement and upward trajectory is indeed the order of the day

So far it hasn't happened, it's important to properly state where the team is, the bottom of the A10. A finish well above that would mark a good step forward.

There's a lot of fraudulent nonsense here to achieve some bizarre make believe agenda. Anyone half paying attention can spot it.

The team is not at the bottom of the A-10. Last year was an abbreviated and incomplete season for a number of reasons. There is no need to set a low bar for this team (not saying it should be a high bar either). As I said coaches, players and staff will be disappointed with a finish that results in a play-in game. So progress in their mind is a top 10 finish. Not sure why you think that shouldn't be the case. 

"Improved play 100% what I want like everyone else. Happy talk from JC or anyone else not in the mood."
Fred makes an excellent point in this bizarre debate about whether we should expect 10th or 14th place in a not particularly brutal league.
  This is what we are hoping for in our fifth year rebuild after a stretch that included an NIT Championship won at the Garden, an NIT win and an NCAA appearance? Be still, my beating heart.
 

Predicting how teams will finish in the bottom half of the A10 every year is a crapshoot - it's not a conference like the WCC where it seems team placement remains relatively the same year after year. This year, I think you can probably say there is a set top 5 with Bona at the top, then a slight gap before Richmond/SLU, and then a bigger gap before VCU/Dayton (probable NIT teams that have questions - VCU sans Baldwin, Dayton with an inexperienced backcourt - both teams have the talent otherwise and a set system).

There isn't much of a difference between the rest of the teams. Davidson/George Mason might be the "best of the rest" since McKillop will always have a skilled team that lags behind defensively, and Paulsen left Mason with a high floor before departing.

URI is pretty balanced with P6 talent, but I don't think Cox is a particularly good coach otherwise I might put them with Davidson/Mason.
UMass has the same problem as us. Some good guards but a very exploitable frontcourt. Their record last year was padded by winning against bad teams.
Duquesne has perhaps as many question marks as a team as us. Seems like predictors are giving Dambrot the benefit of the doubt since he has done a decent job there.
La Salle has a bunch of players who can't really shoot and their defense isn't particularly great either.
St. Joe's seems to be the trendy pick to move up the standings which I still don't get. If Hall alone can get them to the middle of the A10 he should win PoY and Lange should win CoY. They have been Fordham bad, lost Daly, and aren't good defensively. Lange hasn't had a great track record honestly.
Fordham has a couple of interesting guards but the rest of the team looks brutal on paper.

I think there's a scenario where we could finish as high as 9 based on that but I do get the apprehension. With Lee I would have said pretty confidently we'll avoid the bottom 4. Now I'm not so sure. Given we've finished 11th in JC's first two years (depending if you want to even look at last year), anything below that would feel like a disappointment. I don't think the teams who have finished beneath us have suddenly become that good.

The glaring weaknesses on this team are shooting and a lack of depth. Based on how heavily this team tilts towards the guards, playing at a frenetic pace, getting out in transition, and exerting a lot of ball pressure along the perimeter makes sense. However, that still doesn't really solve our inability to contest shots near the rim so if other teams break our press we're basically doomed. I don't think that would have changed much with Ira (from a shot blocking perspective) although he might have been able to alter shots. Maybe the hope is that Noel has progressed a lot otherwise I don't see how we have addressed that.

Shooting could end up being better on the court, but on paper it's underwhelming if we are playing four guards in a four-out one-in system. Bishop could probably be more efficient playing some off-ball, but Freeman strikes me as a bit streaky of a shooter (though he did improve over the course of high school). Bamisile could go either way - the sample size was too small at VT. Adams has not been good from deep from his time at UConn. Knapp can definitely help out there, but his defensive numbers at Cornell have been pretty bad so we'd have to hide him a bit. Ricky's one weakness is outside shooting.

We currently have 11 on scholarship, and lost 1 of those to a season-injury (maybe it's 12 if we gave Knapp a scholarship). If one of the starters go down (especially someone as important as Ricky), it could get ugly real fast with Samuels or Nixon having to play major minutes. While Amir might have fully recovered from sitting out last year, it's hard to be confident that he can play a full season healthy given his college career so far (and he's also another player who isn't particularly strong from deep).

I think we know more or less what to expect offensively (though my guess is we aren't going to be hoisting threes at the level JC envisioned when he first got here) but given how much we were changing things up defensively last year I'm interested to see whether we can finally develop an identity on that side of the floor - a man-to-man which will test Hunter/Noel, or a zone that hopefully shows better rotation between the guards/wings on the squad. I'm with FredD at the moment that I'm skeptical that the team defense improves, especially near the rim.
 

If the consensus has us finishing in 12th or 13th place, as you've made up, then by no means should one state that finishing in 11th would be "well above" the forecasts.  Finishing in 11th would be slightly above the forecasts, finishing in 10th would be above the forecasts, and finishing in 9th would be well above the forecasts.  I suspect most reasonable people would agree with this. 

Nevertheless,  you have yet to provide any examples that would support your statement that most predictions have GW finishing in 12th or 13th place.  I have pointed out that Lindy's has GW finishing in 9th while Blue Ribbon predicts a 12th place finish.  For you to assert that there is a consensus must mean there are plenty of other media outlets picking GW to finish in 12th or 13th place.  Can you cite who these outlets are that when combined, are forming the consensus you are indicating? 
 

What do they always say ... sports predictions are like assholes, everyone has one. Half the guys writing these things have never seen GW play or if they have do not have a familiarity with the team.  The Dude can continue to to buy his magazines and believe in a consensus (bottom of A-10) that doesn't exist. The real season will be here soon enough. Much more interested in that. Nobody will care what Lindy's wrote in December and I promise the coaches and players aren't very interested in that either. I think the goal should clearly be to avoid playing in the play-in game and getting to a winning overall record. Those two things happen and we've made progress. If they don't happen, then no progress. I'd bet to a man every coach and player would agree with that regardless of what some self-appointed "guru" is writing on his computer somewhere.

GWRising wrote:

The team is not at the bottom of the A-10. Last year was an abbreviated and incomplete season for a number of reasons. There is no need to set a low bar for this team (not saying it should be a high bar either). As I said coaches, players and staff will be disappointed with a finish that results in a play-in game. So progress in their mind is a top 10 finish. Not sure why you think that shouldn't be the case. 

While finishing in 10th place of a 14 team conference would be progress over last year's 11th place finish (and 11th place finish the year before, and 13th place finish the year before that), I don't think that slow incremental progress would be particularly uplifting, absent something demonstrated on the court or the recruiting front that would see a jump to Top 6 in 2022-23.  If our 11th place finish last year can be excused by "a number of reasons," I'd expect better than 10th place this year.