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Message: [QUOTE="Niastri, post: 5538717, member: 722"] How on earth can you say this with such certainty? We have a completely different roster... Even the guys we have from last year missed almost a whole season's worth of games to injury. Nobody can say with certainty how we're going to look. On defense, we are trading out a bunch of guys at every position. Center: Lampkin/nobody/Majstorovic for Kyle/Souare, which seems like a big upgrade in mobility and shotblocking at the position. Power Forward: Freshman Freeman/Davis for Sophomore Freeman/White/Betsey, which is a huge upgrade of experience and height/athleticism, respectively. I think that will be a huge improvement defensively, especially when Freeman is on the bench. Small Forward: Bell/Lucas Taylor for Kingz/Anthony/Betsey/Fennell? Just having Bell off the court is going to improve our defense here. Kingz is much stronger and interested in defense. Kingz is the player we hoped Bell might someday become, but better. Bell was the weakest defensive player on our team last year. Lucas Taylor was a decent deep bench reserve who wound up starting way too many games for us last season. I would take either Anthony or Fennell over him, and we have both. Shooting Guard: Junior Starling/Cuffe/Moore for Senior Starling/Anthony/Fennell. This one is at worst a wash. The extra year of practice and good health can't hurt Starling, though he is unlikely to ever be "good" defensively. I think the extra height from the reserves at this position will help, though Cuffe and Moore worked very hard defensively, they were substantially shorter than our current reserve guards, which makes contesting 3s much harder. Point Guard: Carlos/nobody for George/Fennell. This was an egregious recruiting miss last season, at our most pressing position of need. George is going to be world's better than Carlos on offense, but also is a stronger defensive player, both physically and in on court results. All together, 4 out of 5 positions are going to be improved with roster turnover. Importantly, the synergy of having massive improvement defensively at each position should make individual players better. For instance, it is much harder to block the shot of a guy who has a clear line to the basket than it is to block the shot of someone who is closely guarded and hasn't left his man in the dust. Those little improvements will add up to a much better defensive team. In my opinion. We really won't know without watching the team play. [/QUOTE]

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