Some other willy-nilly predictions I have found on X, coming from "experts" I've never heard of:

Arceneaux:  First Team, Second Team

Witherspoon: Second Team

James:  Third Team

Caputo: Coach of the Year

Predicted Finish:  As high as 3rd and as low as 9th.

Projected starting lineup:  Aranguren, Arceneaux, Witherspoon, James and Vukovic.

Projected Second Team:  Frost, Kossaras, M. Arrington (that's right..we now have 2 Arrington's), Phillips, Urbiha

Note: The notable omissions are N'Landu and Rougier-Roane which I attribute to the predictor being lazy or otherwise not knowing these guys, as opposed to what I'd necessarily expect to be the case.

GW73 wrote:

Shooty Hoops has GW in 8th place with a 10-8 A-10 record and 20-12 overall


https://www.shootyhoops.com/conference-preview/atlantic10/2027

 

How can you finish 10-8 in conference and still end up in 8th place, you might ask? Well, Shooty Hoops is predicting 138 total conference wins versus only 114 losses, which means they are predicting 24 A10 games this year will have TWO winners, lol. So much AI slop out there these days...

GW is 4th in the Torvik A10 rankings and top 85 in the Nation

https://barttorvik.com/trankpre.php?conlimit=A10&state=All&year=2027&sort=

VCU
SLU
Dayton
GW 4th
Mason 
Richmond 
Davidson

 

The Dude wrote:

GW is 4th in the Torvik A10 rankings and top 85 in the Nation

https://barttorvik.com/trankpre.php?conlimit=A10&state=All&year=2027&sort=

VCU
SLU
Dayton
GW 4th
Mason 
Richmond 
Davidson

 

Seems to be projecting our offense to be a little worse, but defense to be much improved. 

Although we all have no idea what to expect, I think the defensive prediction makes some sense.

Arcenaux and Spoon should be good perimeter defenders with size.

We lose Castro’s havoc, but between Vukovic and James, plus maybe some help from Urbiha and the bigger wings, we could see our defensive rebounding even better than last year’s solid defensive rebounding  (91st in the country).

On offense, I’m most worried about turnovers holding us back. I suspect we’ll be great in transition (maybe the big wings get us more chances), I think we’ll have more secondary creators (jones and Marshall were decent, everyone else was basically off) which will hopefully make up for it, but unless this team gels really quickly, a slight step back on offense would not surprise.

It’s really fascinating how predictions for us are all over the map, but it makes sense with an almost all new team.

Plus, no one seems to expect anything from Urbiha, or the three freshmen - so if they can contribute, that could help us hit the better predictions. 

Gonna be interesting

PKGW wrote:

I am out of town for the Tenple scrimmage on Saturday. Is any other season ticket holders able to make it? Will get some good insight at least what the rotations look like early on.

I'll be there.  Happy to provide any insights and also happy to say hi to any other posters at the pre or post game festivities.  

The last time GW finished top 100 in offensive turnover percentage was 2015-16. They've been above average in just three of the ten years since. While I don't have a lot of belief that a backcourt of Jean Carlos, Mari, and Promis will suddenly turn GW into an elite ball handling unit (I don't get the sense that the wings like Felix or Ryder want the ball in their hands a lot either), all I ask is for the team to be nationally average there and not be bottom 80 like they've been the last two years. Part of it is pace, but even then it should not be as bad as it's been. Last year's team was able to offset the wasted possessions with good offensive rebounding. While I do think this year's team will be decent there, I am doubtful that the team can be 26th nationally good again.

One area that should improve is free throw rate. CC's two teams (2022-23/2024-25) that finished .500 or better in the A10 were both top 100 in FTR. Last year's rate (184th) doesn't look so bad because Slim was hard to keep off the line (for good and bad reasons) but if you take him out the rest of the team was pretty inept at putting pressure on the rim. The two aforementioned teams were actually poor shooting from deep, so I think leaning less on the three ball and finding a better balance is a good thing in my book.

TA's presence on the wing will also be refreshing compared to asking Garrett or Bubu to serve as lockdown defenders. Obviously, that wasn't a strength of Garrett's and while Bubu's effort was appreciated he doesn't have the pure length that Arceneaux has. On paper, this should be CC's best defensive team at GW, and if the team doesn't finish top 100 on that end this year (absent major injuries) it will be a massive disappointment.

As much as I want to hype up the Urbiha pickup, the track record of international guys under CC isn't great. I do think Lovro is pretty skilled offensively. The question is whether he can hang laterally and defend quicker players given how much CC likes to switch defensively.

I've largely stopped caring about preseason rankings, but I will say that talent-wise this team is probably in double-bye range. However, CC has to show he can coach a team to be top 4. MBB has peaked in November most years of his tenure. I think it goes beyond quality of competition, because there's generally been a drop off between November and December as well. No doubt CC has something to prove this year.