Have Iowa 17th, much more appropriate than all these nonsense top 5 rankings.
It won’t matter. Your typical writer for the AP poll doesn’t put more than a few minutes research into it. Or they’re just a wack job like Graham Couch.
They’ll see that Garza is returning and think that means they’re a national title contender while ignoring that the only time Fran has won 25+ games at Iowa is when they finished as the NIT runner up and he’s never done better than T3rd in the conference.
Oh no doubt. A returning NPOY level player automatically means a top 5 team, despite not being a top 20 team when they had the player the previous season.
You also have the factor of known versus unknown. Picking a random example, MSU might turn out to be a great team this year if Watts, Hauser and others are able to shine when given the chance. But it is impossible to know that - what we know is that Winston and Tillman are gone. We know that Garza is going to be great and that they return just about everyone. So it is easier to draw the conclusion that they’ll be good than it is to figure out which other team with lots of turnover will be.
To me the question is Bohannon. I don’t pretend to think he’ll help their defense, but he does give them another guard and floor-spacer to surround Garza with and he has the potential to be very good. However…I saw what Spike looked like after serious hip surgery and I’m skeptical Bohannon will be more than a solid rotation piece next year.
/whisper voice
The AP Poll doesn’t matter.
I agree. Returning from major hip surgery takes more than a year. Making quick stop and gos and lateral movement will not come easy. As you said ie Spike Albrecht.
Oh, I know. And neither does the coaches’ poll. But it still makes a difference in how wins and losses are talked about by media and fans and thus really annoying
and even before his injury, Bohannon was a (below) average player the first 37-38 minutes of any B10 game.
I’m ok with that personally. Would’ve loved to have played Oregon but can still get some good non-con games regionally like Xavier, Cincinatti, Marquette, Butler, Notre Dame, etc. Plus many mid majors in the region.
I doubt there are many (if any) non conference games played this year. The B1G will probably not be playing any games prior to January 1st. Even after that seems pretty up in the air
Traveling to Florida for a tournament sounds like a ridiculous idea. Maybe that changes in a few months. The NBA made a commitment to stay in a bubble for months. I don’t see how that experience will apply to a weekend tournament
It sounds like talk of non con bubbles with ~6ish teams round robin playing 5 games is an option too. I would love to see the empire classic group + a couple mid or mow major adds. Or a group with Kentucky, it sounds like Cal is in the list of coaches trying to stay up mini bubbles.
Michigan’s non-con what the potential to be ridiculous this year. Nova and Baylor are top 3 teams, plus Kentucky and @Oregon and some solid mid majors
I assume it would be some kind of travel, quarantine, play for a week. More like TBT than NBA. Probably a round robin style.
And they may also need to quarantine when they come back.
University presidents are going to need to be convinced that it’s safe to play at all. Whatever the procedure, it sounds like a pipe dream to sell them on sending their teams to a hard hit state like Florida.
How many D1 teams are in Michigan? Seems reasonable to be able to create your own bubble to knock out a few games with the in-state teams early on…
Hmm…that’s actually a good trivia question. Are there 7 in basketball?
UM, MSU, EMU, WMU, CMU, Oakland, Detroit…who am I forgetting??