I've never understood this. This team has literally one guy who played starter minutes over the course of a season on it and that's Battle to go along with all freshman and a Howard who can't seem to get his game or head on straight. What team like this has been in a "wheelhouse"? 2013 had senior leadership, 2015 had 9 years worth of 2-3 zone at the top of it and all of our other successful teams were just great teams top to bottom with multiple returning starters. What team has JB ever coached like this to a successful season?
I'll say that I'm skeptical that this team has what it takes to improve much if at all on what we saw last season or to be a factor as a top 6 or 7 team in the ACC. But I do see the other side of the coin as well -- that there are a few things that could happen that could allow for this team to surprise.
For example, I do tend to agree that JB has a way of taking teams without many or any expectations and making them pretty competitive. Even
2014/15, as an example, sure the team only wins 18 games but that was a team with absolutely no business being competitive if you consider that;
A)Joseph comes in and can't replicate what Ennis (or come even close)
B) We were hopeful that McCullough would potentially be the go-to guy and he not only missed half the season but played pretty poorly in 8 of the 16 games he played.
C) The guys who end up being two of the three leading scorers were Xmas, who had been horrible offensively for three years (not bad defensively at times, but awful offensively) and G, who had struggled to do much offensively despite being a 3rd-year soph.
D) They ended up leaning heavily on Roberson after the McCullough injury
The fact that that team went .500 in the ACC is a pretty remarkable season, IMO.
In
'95/'96, having wallace as a stud is a huge benefit and Hill is a good player but that's about all we know before Burgan emerges, Sims proves he's not only a solid PG but a really good one, and Janulis/Cipolla prove to be adequate at the 2.
In
15/16 you have Cooney who is a decent veteran but not someone you can really lean on and G who had been solid as a junior but was now the PG and at least I had no idea he had the kind of season in him that he put up as a senior. Other than that it's two good recruits but both are unproven and two unkowns for the most part in Roberson and Coleman (Roberson had a solid soph season but the jury is still out).
So I don't know how you rank any of those seasons really relate specifically to our roster headed into this year, but there are some parallels. I also don't expect a final four run, but somewhat interesting.
As an aside, I also think JB's teams tend to really struggle when they don't fit together well, regardless of talent. Last year was a year when A) they played horrible defense (something you almost never see from JB teams) and B) they had several guys playing out of position (White was a guy they wanted at the 2 but couldn't hang there, Gillon did fine at the point but wasn't a particularly good facilitator, Lydon never quite figured out what he was supposed to do on offense and they couldn't get anything from either center due in large part to injuries.
So if Howard improves, Thorpe contributes, Battle is settled in at the 2, Oshae/Marek can hold down the 3, Moyer at least hustles and plays D at the 4 and they can get 15-20 minutes from Sidibe/Chukwu at the 5 -- you could at least make the argument they fit together better and should be noticeably improved defensively. Scoring will be an issue almost without question, but they might be able to eke out a bubble season if they are that much better defensively.
