What you believe about this season so far and the future comes down to two things: (1) whether you believe in the coaches and current players, and (2) what you make of the losses to NJIT and Eastern.
If had told you before the year that in the following games, Oregon (n), Nova (n), Cuse, @Zona, SMU, Illinois, @PU, @PSU, Minny, the team would be 5-4, you’d probably thought we were having a pretty good season, be sitting at 12-4, where even finishing up 7-7 would get us to 19 wins before the B1G started and twenty wins was looking quite likely by that juncture. If I had told you this was the record even though Caris had a wrap around his hand for some games, Walton had a toe injury, Wilson was out for the year, Spike had been suffering a “lower-body” injury, you’d be feeling pretty good, especially if at least some of those issues were improving or resolved. So we have to ask what to make, at this juncture, of the two losses to NJIT and EMU.
Similarly, looking at brief kenpom stats, the team is at 76th on defense, in the range of a lot of previous years and what was reasonable to predict, although some were predicting a lot worse. But the offense is at 101, below just about any reasonable prediction. So you could look at the team and think the defense is going to be worse, and thus our conference record will plummet. Or you could think that the offense is likely to move up, and the decent defense means we’re likely to continue to have a better conference record. How you assess the likelihood of these matters comes down to how you feel about the coaches and the players. How good do you think JB & Co are? How good are LeVert, Walton, Irvin and Doyle?
I’m inclined to see the two losses as somewhat fluky – I’d be surprised if NJIT shot 65% from 3 again – and not as bad as might’ve appeared – NJIT, at 201, has a higher kenpom rating than a bunch of AAC, CUSA, A10, MWC, MVC, and MAC teams, and Eastern has a higher KP ranking than 3 B1G teams. I’m also inclined to believe that with Walton looking better, Doyle looking more consistent, etc. - our offense is pretty likely to improve. On the other hand, the team did lose those games, of course, and has looked a little fragile at times. It’s pretty late in the year but once again we don’t really know what we have.
The B1G seemingly being a bit down is an interesting twist – it may allow for more conference wins, but may make it harder to get “signature wins” for the March resume. Should be an interesting next 5 games - @OSU, NU, @Rut, WI, Neb. You’d think we’ll know more by then, but we’ll see.