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2024-2025 schedule

BWCD said:
The KenPom thing was a joke more than anything since it's June and we're quoting CBB team rankings. :ROFLMAO: You can't really start hanging your hat on off-season KenPom or Bart Torvik rankings...especially with how different our roster is gonna look.

Arky's gonna be better than you're thinking, I believe. Cal always tends to have big positive impacts early on when he arrives somewhere, and he did bring a lot of that UK roster/recruiting class with him (and whatever the knocks on Cal are, it's not recruiting, so those guys are talented), and they're adding Aidoo at C from Tennessee and Johnell Davis from FAU - both really solid pieces. One guy that followed Cal from UK as a recruit is Karter Knox as well and I'd project him to be threatening for PT on the wing.

Cal ain't gonna roll his UK squad from last season out on the floor that blasted us...sure. But he's not gonna have a team of scrubs either. DJ Wagner sure ain't a scrub. Neither are Thiero and Ivisic...the latter wasn't eligible yet when we played otherwise he'd a have probably logged some minutes/stats against us in the blowout last season. UK fans were super high on him.
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It's been many, many years since Calipari maximized his talent.

And preseason analytics are every bit as predictive as preseason human prognosticators. Compare how preseason Kenpom typically fares vs the preseason AP poll.

I'm not saying they're going to be terrible. I think they'll make the tournament. But I think we'll make the tournament too, we'll be at home, and I don't think they'll be an elite team right out of the gate. It seems unreasonable to conclude that we'll be heavy underdogs in that game.
 
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ALLoverCANE said:
It's been many, many years since Calipari maximized his talent.

And preseason analytics are every bit as predictive as preseason human prognosticators. Compare how preseason Kenpom typically fares vs the preseason AP poll.

I'm not saying they're going to be terrible. I think they'll make the tournament. But I think we'll make the tournament too, we'll be at home, and I don't think they'll be an elite team right out of the gate. It seems unreasonable to conclude that we'll be heavy underdogs in that game.
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Re: KenPom typically faring well...I'd say the standard deviation on that is going to get bigger w/the portal era. Was a lot easier to make metrics and use them as predictive when rosters weren't turning over this much this quickly.

And I didn't say Cal maximized talent - I'm saying he usually does well *early* when he arrives some place new. That's all.

I think recent history (aka last season) with our team, even with the roster turnover, is making me very cautious with any positive outlook. I believe Coach L can turn it around. I think the additions we've made in recruiting and the portal are positive. BUT - I'm not thinking we're going into this season as a tourney team after how things went last season. I'm just being conservative with my excitement. I ain't from Missouri, but "show me" is my approach. Gun to my head today, I wouldn't call us a tournament team until I see how the pieces fit and gel. Not counting it out, but I'm not betting the house on it either...which I think is more than fair after what we went thru this past year.
 
ALLoverCANE said:
It's been many, many years since Calipari maximized his talent.

And preseason analytics are every bit as predictive as preseason human prognosticators. Compare how preseason Kenpom typically fares vs the preseason AP poll.

I'm not saying they're going to be terrible. I think they'll make the tournament. But I think we'll make the tournament too, we'll be at home, and I don't think they'll be an elite team right out of the gate. It seems unreasonable to conclude that we'll be heavy underdogs in that game.
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No doubt Kenpom is as good as a knowledgeable human prognosticator - but I don’t think better.

Ultimately they’re all just informed shots in the dark.

Kenpom has been consistently wrong about us. We ended up way worse than his preseason projection for last season (top 50) and way better than his projections the prior two seasons.

I’ve written too much about kenpom on this board already lol… I think his ranking formula is bad because it is basically blinded to wins and losses. It fundamentally under-ranks teams that consistently win close games against good and bad opponents and over-ranks teams who run train on bad teams but lose close games to all the good teams they play.
 
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AmherstCane said:
I think 3-5 we should be very good defensively. Backcourt is a question for sure… hopefully Pack and Jalen can level up and Bethea can get up to speed quicker than most freshmen.
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I just realized I totally forgot about Stanton McCray… he should give us some defensive help at the 2 if/when we need to go bigger.

I don’t think we’ll see this lineup much, but we could go 6’4” Bethea, 6’5” Stanton McCray, 6’7” Cleveland, 6’8” Johnson, and 6’10” Kidd.

I would expect to see a lot of Pack so that makes us a lot smaller in the backcourt, but we have a lot of potential versatility.
 
Anyone know when the full schedules are released ? Season is roughly 3 months away so I’d thought we’d get something by now
 
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Charleston bracket was announced yesterday as well. We play Drake in the opening game, then play one of FAU/Oklahoma St. in the second round. One of Seton Hall/VCU/Vanderbilt/Nevada will be the third game. According to Torvik, Miami is rated 26th coming into the season, and no other team is ranked in the top 50 (VCU is the next highest rated at 53, and Nevada is the only other team in the top 70).

Would have liked to see one more decent game, either at home or a true road game, at the expense of the six teams that will likely be outside of the top 250. Doesn't have to be top 25 team, just a team that could conceivably challenge for an at large berth. It puts more pressure to get at least one win out of the Arkansas/Tennessee matchups.
 
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mtsucalico85 said:


Charleston bracket was announced yesterday as well. We play Drake in the opening game, then play one of FAU/Oklahoma St. in the second round. One of Seton Hall/VCU/Vanderbilt/Nevada will be the third game. According to Torvik, Miami is rated 26th coming into the season, and no other team is ranked in the top 50 (VCU is the next highest rated at 53, and Nevada is the only other team in the top 70).

Would have liked to see one more decent game, either at home or a true road game, at the expense of the six teams that will likely be outside of the top 250. Doesn't have to be top 25 team, just a team that could conceivably challenge for an at large berth. It puts more pressure to get at least one win out of the Arkansas/Tennessee matchups.
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I do like having 2 top SEC teams and some good competition in the Charleston tourney. Drake is pretty good most seasons and they are definitely well coached.
Winning the games against the SEC teams can mean a lot at the end of the season. And it gives us an opportunity to play against more size which has really hurt UM the last 3 seasons.
 
AtlAtty said:
I do like having 2 top SEC teams and some good competition in the Charleston tourney. Drake is pretty good most seasons and they are definitely well coached.
Winning the games against the SEC teams can mean a lot at the end of the season. And it gives us an opportunity to play against more size which has really hurt UM the last 3 seasons.
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We'll see with Drake, they did lose Darian DeVries to West Virginia and he brought his son along with him, so they should be down compared to where they were the past couple of seasons. It's possible it's a Quad 2 game, but I think it is slightly more likely it ends up a Quad 3 game with them remaining just outside the top 100.

Their new coach, Ben McCollum, has a **** of a resume coming up from D2, but I'm sure there will still be a little bit of an adjustment from D2 to coaching against mid-to-high major D1 competition.
 
mtsucalico85 said:
We'll see with Drake, they did lose Darian DeVries to West Virginia and he brought his son along with him, so they should be down compared to where they were the past couple of seasons. It's possible it's a Quad 2 game, but I think it is slightly more likely it ends up a Quad 3 game with them remaining just outside the top 100.

Their new coach, Ben McCollum, has a **** of a resume coming up from D2, but I'm sure there will still be a little bit of an adjustment from D2 to coaching against mid-to-high major D1 competition.
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I didn’t know about the coaching change at Drake but the pay raise is justified for DeVries. Thanks for that info.
 
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