She says we need
One Vegas game (1)
@Drexel (2)
Beat all the teams in 300s - this projects to be Binghamton, Delaware St, Mercyhurt, Stonehill (6)
Some conference road games - we will only be favored at BC, let’s be optimistic and say we get 4 road wins - BC, 2 vs GAtech/Pitt/NCState/Wake, 1 vs UNC/UVA/Duke/LVille (10)
Games we “should” win not listed above - Monmouth, StJoes, Hofstra, Northeastern, Clemson, FSU, VaTech, Miami, ND, Cal, SMU, Pitt (22)
If the season shakes out that way we are a lock.
Using this as our baseline, I think we can have as little as 19 wins. We have 3 top 20 road/neutral games against OOC teams. We have 5 projected top 50 road games in conference play and only 1 home game.
If we don’t win road games won’t go to the dance this year. 9 top 50 games and 8 are away from the Dome - we need to be able to win on the road this year to get a bid. Just holding serve at home won’t do anything
I think we have a much better chance in Vegas than you think.
Every team is in flux, every season these days. Nobody really knows what they have until they see it on the court against good competition. Syracuse has two returning players, and that seems more the norm than the exception these days.
I just read a season outlook for Kansas, and their starting 3 guard lineup is two mid major transfers and a highly recruited freshman. They are loaded with inexperienced talent... But they are starting the lower level recruits with experience. We shall see.
Houston has some really good recruits as well, but lost its leading scorer and is going to try to replace that scoring with freshmen.
Nobody really knows how the team is going to perform, and that goes for just about everybody.
I would actually put the over under at 23.5 wins for Syracuse this year. Lots of winnable games, lots of toss-ups and few likely losses. I think we'll be in every game this year.
I think Syracuse is going to have a completely different product with the talents of Kline and Harris added to the program.
You can't overstate how bad the offseason was before last season, and how good this one was. Kline seemed to help with scouting and allocation of funds, and we pulled in a bunch of extremely long armed athletes who use length of limb as a proxy for height. Having guys that can reach 9' high seems to be a primary criteria for big men, and the defense is going to be greatly improved by having all those long arms deflecting passes and shots. We will be switchable, which didn't work well last year because of mobility issues throughout the defense.
Then, we got one of the best point guards in the country at throwing diagonal alley oop passes to those athletic big men. We haven't had a true point guard at Syracuse in a long time.
On top of the innate talent increase with the transfer class, Harris has set a different tone than previously. These guys look better than any team I've ever seen at Syracuse. The intensity of their workouts is going to leak into their intensity in everything else they do. Gone are the days of Cole Swider posting video of him working out by himself, quietly, without a drop of sweat on him. These kids are being reformed into monsters in the gym.
Huge improvements to offense and defense, along with massive upgrade in depth, and I predict at least a 10 win improvement over last season.
