Not going to lie -- last night, I thought about Pitino's preseason assessment of our team, and wondered why it hadn't come to pass. JB also expressed that he believed this was a top 3 ACC team this year.
Hard to believe how badly things have gone awry.
I am 0% surprised by how the season is playing out. Last year's SW16 run was great, but that team was crummy for the 30+ other games. Sample size matters. The smarter bet was that the returning talent is more like the 30+ crummy games than the 4 good games.
And more importantly, we don't have a lot of high ceiling players where you look at the team and say "wow, there is a LOT of room for growth".
Tyus is a really good college player but he's not consistent from game to game and is not as athletic as our fanbase seems to think.
Brisset showed beyond a shadow of a doubt last year that he is an incredibly inefficient player with the shooting percentages that he put up inside the arc. He doesn't have any touch around the basket. I honestly think that is something that is really, really hard to teach. [As an aside - people here compare him to Paul Harris in terms of finishing - this is LAUGHABLE. Harris shot 47 and 49.4% from the floor his last two years here. If Brisset shot at that percentage, he'd be putting up John Wallace SR year numbers.]
Howard is not a high upside player because he's not overly quick or athletic. I don't see where his ceiling is much higher than what he showed last year, and he went into the season with a serious injury.
I didn't look at that group as having much room for growth from last year. Incremental improvements, sure, but not bigtime changes.
Chukwu is Chukwu. Sidibe is recovering from longstanding/nagging injuries. Marek has either been told not to shoot (yes, this is a Boeheim thing), or he is too scarred to shoot. Then we have a SG playing the wing of the zone - this is going to be a HUGE problem once we hit ACC play. You just can't afford to have a wing of the zone grabbing sub 5 rebounds per game when your center rotation is Chewy, Sid, and Marek.
I think we can get to 9-9 in ACC play but I just don't see much upside over that.
Mason