AP Poll #9

[PoppyHart]

Everybody knows, including Kentucky, that they are not as good as last year and that they will struggle early. Still, they have enough talent, vis a vis the rest of the country, to be playing until the end.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that once they lose in November or December there will be a massive over-reaction.

 

[SoBeCuse]

Everybody knows, including Kentucky, that they are not as good as last year and that they will struggle early. Still, they have enough talent, vis a vis the rest of the country, to be playing until the end.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that once they lose in November or December there will be a massive over-reaction.

Nice. Pretty much sums it up.

 

[HouseOfCuse]

I agree with kentucky isn't going to be that good. last year you had a Senior in Miller, Two highly recuited Sophmores, and three top 5 recuits and along with a recuit ranked 22. So you had senior and two 2nd year players who played a lot as freshman. Then 3 of the best players in the freshman class.

This year they have one returning player with experience in Whitjer and he barely played at the end of last year. Then the transfer point guard who has some experience. The rest our freshman and not nearly as good as the ones coming in last year.

I don't think they will be top ten this year.

 

[senorpalmer]

For the crowd who thought SU was/is not top 10 material, I too look at what's ahead of them in this poll and LMFAO. There's been too much talk of Kentucky in this thread so I'll leave them out of it, but at a minimum NFW NC St and Michigan are better than Syracuse.

 

[HOFCeluck]

For the crowd who thought SU was/is not top 10 material, I too look at what's ahead of them in this poll and LMFAO. There's been too much talk of Kentucky in this thread so I'll leave them out of it, but at a minimum NFW NC St and Michigan are better than Syracuse.

Really? We lost three starters and a guy who would have started on like 99 percent of college teams. The guys who are taking over are holy regarded but largely unproven or taking on greatly expanded roles.

NC State returns almost everyone from a sweet 16 team and is bringing in an awesome recruiting class.

 

[senorpalmer]

Really? We lost three starters and a guy who would have started on like 99 percent of college teams. The guys who are taking over are holy regarded but largely unproven or taking on greatly expanded roles.

NC State returns almost everyone from a sweet 16 team and is bringing in an awesome recruiting class.

SU still has a solid core of guys from an Elite 8 team that was consensus top 2 in the nation (at least until the Fab Melo messes 1 and 2). And we replace those starters with three McD AA's. And NC St cinderella'ed their way into the Sweet 16, they were 22-12/9-7 prior to the tournament and were an 11 seed in the dance, let's not mistake them for a legit top 15-20 program from last year. And you can't tell me SU's highly regarded newbies are question marks and say NC St's aren't.

 

[HOFCeluck]

SU still has a solid core of guys from an Elite 8 team that was consensus top 2 in the nation (at least until the Fab Melo messes 1 and 2). And we replace those starters with three McD AA's. And NC St cinderella'ed their way into the Sweet 16, they were 22-12/9-7 prior to the tournament and were an 11 seed in the dance, let's not mistake them for a legit top 15-20 program from last year. And you can't tell me SU's highly regarded newbies are question marks and say NC St's aren't.

I'm not saying NCSU will be better. But it's not ridiculous to say they will be based on what the teams each bring back in terms of talent.

I don't think anyone has a good handle on what any team Will do this year. I think IU is the most questionable number one Ina few years. I think we could end up being ranked anywhere from 5-25 when it's all said and done.

But it says a lot about our program that we can lose so much and still be a consensus top 10 team. Such a nice departure from five years ago.

 

[Knicks411]

I'm not saying NCSU will be better. But it's not ridiculous to say they will be based on what the teams each bring back in terms of talent.

I don't think anyone has a good handle on what any team Will do this year.

I think this is true, maybe this year more than in general, but it's kinda true every year. Just go back to last year; as freshmen Fab was a bust, and while Dion wasn't a bust on the level of Fab, he had kind of an underwhelming freshmen year and may have been pretty close to leaving the team after the season. Then last year they are 2 of our most important players.

So I mean I couldn't really say for sure if we're better than State or Michigan or whoever; we're going to have some (very talented) guys in roles that they aren't really used to playing. Pomeroy did an interesting blog entry about how he thinks the pre-season poll is actually a better indicator than some later polls because that is purely based on what people think prior to the season and you don't have a situation where teams get moved up or down purely because they lost or haven't lost, etc. For whatever it's worth, the #9 team in the preseason AP poll has gotten a top 3 seed 15 out of 28 times since the field expanded in 85.

But it says a lot about our program that we can lose so much and still be a consensus top 10 team. Such a nice departure from five years ago.

Yeah it really is pretty nice. That's another thing, along with the final fours and titles (which we have fallen a bit short on) that makes you one of the elite programs; you're always in the top 10. We lost the 3 of our top 4 guys who played the largest % of our minutes last year, plus the defensive POY in the conference, and we're inside the top 10. Not bad.

 

[HOFCeluck]

I think the difference is that while the core of last years team is gone, in 2011 our team was returning relatively intact plus two Mcdonalds All Americans.

Admittedly I was skeptical last year as well. I like being wrong sometimes.

 

[senorpalmer]

I'm not saying NCSU will be better. But it's not ridiculous to say they will be based on what the teams each bring back in terms of talent.

I don't think anyone has a good handle on what any team Will do this year. I think IU is the most questionable number one Ina few years. I think we could end up being ranked anywhere from 5-25 when it's all said and done.

But it says a lot about our program that we can lose so much and still be a consensus top 10 team. Such a nice departure from five years ago.

NC St will (or should) be better than they were last year. They were also a far cry from a top 10 team. I say without question that they bring back less talent than SU does, despite everything SU lost. NC St does bring in a strong class of 3 guys, but I don't believe it + what they return catapults them into a top 10 team.

These are indeed good days for the Syracuse program, 1 seed, 3 seed, 1 seed, 3 seed going back 4 years, and will be in this range again come March.

 

[cuseinseattle]

Really? We lost three starters and a guy who would have started on like 99 percent of college teams. The guys who are taking over are holy regarded but largely unproven or taking on greatly expanded roles.

NC State returns almost everyone from a sweet 16 team and is bringing in an awesome recruiting class.

NC State technically made the sweet 16 but they almost didn't make it into the tourney and we went down there and kicked their a$$ so lets not pretend they were awesome.

 

[PoppyHart]

NC State technically made the sweet 16 but they almost didn't make it into the tourney and we went down there and kicked their a$$ so lets not pretend they were awesome.

To their credit, they were better at the end than they were at the beginning. That is unusual for us.