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Old 08-14-2017, 02:27 PM   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Queens_NYC View Post
Here are my August AAC Power Rankings...

1. UC... A few question marks at the 1 spot but other than that this team can be scary good. Could easily be Cronin's best team yet.

2. WSU... The only team in the league that returns more than UC and I agree with justin that they can be interchangable with UC at the top spot. Hopefully Chamet's absence early on does not lead to any bad OOC performances.
I get that this is a Bearcats board and we're all fans but other than that is there a reason why you'd project UC ahead of WSU?

Every preseason publication I've seen has WSU ranked as a Top 10 team.
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Old 08-14-2017, 03:47 PM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UCBearcats View Post
I get that this is a Bearcats board and we're all fans but other than that is there a reason why you'd project UC ahead of WSU?

Every preseason publication I've seen has WSU ranked as a Top 10 team.
For me, I see UC as better because I’ve watched them
Beat good teams. I watched WSU barely beat Dayton And then lose every other high profile game they played.

They will be adapting to a new league. We won’t

Last edited by justinhub2003; 08-14-2017 at 03:49 PM.
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Old 08-14-2017, 06:16 PM   #33
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Originally Posted by Bearcatboy View Post
What are your questions at the 1 spot? Seems pretty clear to me.....
What I meant by "1 spot" was the point guard position, specifically pertaining to Broome. We lost one of our biggest rocks in Caupain and while Broome's play may ultimately exceed that of his predecessor, he is a big unknown at an important position for us.

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I think the bottom line here is that the conference gets better by adding WSU as well as getting a little stronger when taking them out of the equation. Our schedule will be stronger OOC as well.

We may even lose a couple more games than last year but improve our overall ranking if we win the right games and don't have any bad losses.
I agree with all of this. I could see the league's regular season champion easily losing 3-4 conference games and still earning a higher NCAA seed than last season's champs (6 seed).

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Originally Posted by UCBearcats View Post
I get that this is a Bearcats board and we're all fans but other than that is there a reason why you'd project UC ahead of WSU?

Every preseason publication I've seen has WSU ranked as a Top 10 team.
Over the past 4 years, we've averaged 14 conference wins a season in the AAC, second only to SMU by 1 win (57 to 56). Wichita does have all the pieces this year to make a Final 4 run but I think our track record against this level of competition along with everyone we return/add should make us the team to beat, even if it's not by a great margin.
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Old 08-14-2017, 07:02 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Queens_NYC View Post
What I meant by "1 spot" was the point guard position, specifically pertaining to Broome. We lost one of our biggest rocks in Caupain and while Broome's play may ultimately exceed that of his predecessor, he is a big unknown at an important position for us.



I agree with all of this. I could see the league's regular season champion easily losing 3-4 conference games and still earning a higher NCAA seed than last season's champs (6 seed).



Over the past 4 years, we've averaged 14 conference wins a season in the AAC, second only to SMU by 1 win (57 to 56). Wichita does have all the pieces this year to make a Final 4 run but I think our track record against this level of competition along with everyone we return/add should make us the team to beat, even if it's not by a great margin.
I was also referring to the point guard position and while this is broomes first year playing with the team he's been here for a year practicing so he knows the team and they know him, he also knows the plays by now and I think he will end up being better than caupain on the court (not records).

As for the # 1 in conference I think we will fall short

Last edited by Bearcatboy; 08-14-2017 at 07:08 PM.
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Old 08-15-2017, 07:39 AM   #35
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If UC isn’t preseason picked to win the league this year it won’t matter, I’m not sure the preseason pick has ever won the AAC.
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Old 08-15-2017, 08:50 AM   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UCBearcats View Post
I get that this is a Bearcats board and we're all fans but other than that is there a reason why you'd project UC ahead of WSU?

Every preseason publication I've seen has WSU ranked as a Top 10 team.
It's not that far fetched really for people who know more about what is going on with the program. It's easier to put WSU up there because they don't have the question marks we do. They return all 5 starters.

Our question marks could very well be upgrades. We have added depth to the bench and upgraded our starters from a team that won 30 games. I'm not sure all the pundits are that in tune with Cumberland and Broome to know what to expect from them. Heck even us fans don't really know for sure.

WSU is a safe bet but it doesn't mean it's the right bet.
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Old 08-15-2017, 09:31 AM   #37
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We will only be a few spots away from Wichita State overall in the preseason stuff. Out of 351 teams, that's a close margin. It's not that strange to prefer one team over the other.

As for the actual voting, seems like a follow the leader game. No one strays too far from each other on this stuff. The Top 10 teams may be shuffled around a bit, but if one publication has Wichita State over us, they all will. They made news by getting screwed on their seed last year, playing Kentucky, and making the move to a new conference. Add that with a coach and roster returning, and it's easy to make them the pick for most pollsters.

It'll play itself out. We need to make sure we don't drop any silly games this year inside the conference. We were really good about that last year. But if the rest of the conference improves some, those games become harder, especially on the road. And it could be the difference between winning the conference or not.

The people picking/voting may have Wichita State over us in the AAC, but even for those people, it's likely by a game.
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Old 08-15-2017, 01:37 PM   #38
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Queens_NYC View Post
Over the past 4 years, we've averaged 14 conference wins a season in the AAC, second only to SMU by 1 win (57 to 56). Wichita does have all the pieces this year to make a Final 4 run but I think our track record against this level of competition along with everyone we return/add should make us the team to beat, even if it's not by a great margin.
I could certainly buy into the idea that our experience playing to a higher level of league competition gives us an edge seeing as how both teams are projected on paper to have fairly similar levels of success. I was just looking to see if there was more behind the prediction other than we want to root for our team to be #1.

I'm just glad to have a team of WSU's caliber in the conference moving forward.
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Old 08-15-2017, 02:03 PM   #39
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It will be interesting seeing how wsu does in conference play the Missouri valley isn't even close to the aac in terms of competition, if Uconn is finishing in the lower half of your conference; then your conference is pretty good. They are going from 12 cup cake games in conference play too, ecu USf and Tulane. Being the only teams that should be sure wins. It will be a big change for them but I don't think it will come down to ether us or them for the league title.
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Old 08-16-2017, 12:39 PM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jacobkdoyle View Post
We will only be a few spots away from Wichita State overall in the preseason stuff. Out of 351 teams, that's a close margin. It's not that strange to prefer one team over the other.

As for the actual voting, seems like a follow the leader game. No one strays too far from each other on this stuff. The Top 10 teams may be shuffled around a bit, but if one publication has Wichita State over us, they all will. They made news by getting screwed on their seed last year, playing Kentucky, and making the move to a new conference. Add that with a coach and roster returning, and it's easy to make them the pick for most pollsters.

It'll play itself out. We need to make sure we don't drop any silly games this year inside the conference. We were really good about that last year. But if the rest of the conference improves some, those games become harder, especially on the road. And it could be the difference between winning the conference or not.

The people picking/voting may have Wichita State over us in the AAC, but even for those people, it's likely by a game.
It's going to be a tougher year to win for us because of the schedule strength and playing off campus. We may not really have a comfortable home to play in so we should be both battle tested and neutral/road game tested when it counts. I say neutral just because it's not our preferred arena we will be playing in. I hope to see a lot more attacking play this year. Less threes and more driving the lane and producing fouls. We settled for 3's too much last year. Our road scoring was not good. We need to look for, and be aggressive for, higher % shots. We also need to run and press more to create easier buckets. We have a great starting 5 and a deep bench so we should take full advantage of that.
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