Non-conference schedule released

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AuricGoldfinger
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Non-conference schedule released

Post by AuricGoldfinger »

The Jordan Wright video is worth your time.

https://vucommodores.com/challenging-schedule-awaits/

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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by VandyPhile »

That was imaginative and fun. Well done!
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by Jason94 »

AuricGoldfinger wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 3:54 pm The Jordan Wright video is worth your time.

https://vucommodores.com/challenging-schedule-awaits/

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This is a somewhat challenging but not impossible schedule - St. Mary's on the west coast is always tough, Memphis will be good, also playing at two teams we lost to at home last season in Temple and VCU and that isn't including multiple high major conference opponents in NCSU, Pitt and Washington (though all three were pretty bad last year). There are some cupcakes in southern Miss, SELA, Grambling, Alabama A&M and I expect Morehead to have a pretty steep dropoff with the loss of their star center Broome (who we will face anyway when we take on Auburn).

But all in all a somewhat advantageous schedule - outside of Pitt and Memphis all of our difficult games or games against major conference opponents are on the road or at neutral sites, and several are very winnable (I imagine outside of St. Mary's we will be either favored or at most a 2 or 3 point dog in all the non-home games. From a season ticket holder standpoint the schedule is ok - Memphis should be a draw but all the other opponents were either horrible or ok at best. None were a top 100 team outside of Memphis so I would hope we could go undefeated at home preconference. If we can get revenge on Temple/VCU and take 2 or 3 in California we could roll into the SEC season at 12-2 or 13-1. If we were able to do something like that a 9 or 10 win SEC season might be enough to get us into the tournament.
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by UltimateVUFan »

Jason, I feel like that’s a tall task given the question marks we have at the off-guard spot. Not impossible, but it will be difficult to say the least. Even PG has some questions to be answered before we know much about the team’s ability to string together that many wins.
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by Jason94 »

UltimateVUFan wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 5:48 am Jason, I feel like that’s a tall task given the question marks we have at the off-guard spot. Not impossible, but it will be difficult to say the least. Even PG has some questions to be answered before we know much about the team’s ability to string together that many wins.
Perhaps - I think we will have a difficult time with St. Marys, at VCU and Memphis, but would be disappointed if we lost all three. We could definitely struggle with shooting, but our frontcourt is legit - we have excellent size and depth that very few teams will be able to match. And this is by far the most returning players that CJS has had so far - we are not having to start a brand new player at the 3,4 or 5 spots. The summer trip will definitely give us a head start on integrating those who are new and help figure out the rotations.

I'm not as concerned about the point - Manjon is going to be fine as a pass first point - the main issue is if we expect him to carry the majority of Pippen's scoring load, which I doubt will be the case, but he should be good for 8-10 ppg easily at good levels of efficiency.

We finished the season ranked 64th in kenpom. Unlike past seasons, we had only a couple of major losses, and while losing Pippen and Chatman are big, we lost major impact players in the previous two seasons in Saben Lee and Dylan Disu/Maxwell Evans while having far fewer returning pieces. This is by far the strongest freshman class that CJS has brought in so it is not difficult to envision us starting ranked in the top 60 in kenpom, which would suggest that we will be a 4-5 point dog against St. Mary's, a couple point favorite against Memphis, and a 5 or 6 point dog against VCU. We will be likely favored in neutral matchups against Washington/Fresno, slight favorites at Temple, two or three possession favorites against Pitt and NCSU at home, and massive favorites against the rest of the home schedule. Injuries could derail us a bit like they did last season, but once we got our team healthy we were a tournament level team. I don't think on net that we dropped off at all, though we missed an opportunity have a massive jump with a strong off-guard addition.

Quite frankly a tournament level team should be able to go 12-2 or 13-1 against this pre-SEC schedule. We really only have two games where we will not likely be favored, and we will not be prohibitive dogs in either matchup.
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by geeznotagain »

I still feel uneasy about the coming season. I’m worried that the loss of Pippin may be insurmountable. Just call me Nervous Nellie.
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

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geeznotagain wrote: Thu Sep 01, 2022 8:47 am I still feel uneasy about the coming season. I’m worried that the loss of Pippin may be insurmountable. Just call me Nervous Nellie.
i totally get it. Pippen was very good and used up a whole lot of shots and possessions. But a byproduct of his using so many possessions and shots was that he was not super efficient and a bit turnover prone. There is enough talent on this roster to not replace Pippen with a single individual, but collectively replace his overall production through incremental increases of responsibility of multiple players. Pippen used up 35% of the possessions and 33% of the shots while he was on the floor. Reasonably we can expect Manjon to use up 20% of the possessions and 20-22% of the shots at a similar efficiency (Manjon was using closer to 30% of each at UC Davis). This would then require Wright, Stute and Robbins/QMB to increase their usage and shooting about 3% each and have a Lawrence or whoever plays shooting guard to have a usage rate similar of that to Chatman (which wasn't that high). If they each can do so at an average efficiency then we would be no worse off than we were at the end of last season (and we were pretty good then) but will have a better overall supporting cast and a whole lot more post depth.

If we ended up at 19-16 last season but Pippen had shot 42% from three, we would be in for a pretty big dropoff. But Pippen shot 32.5% and 74% from the line. Had he been more efficient we probably would have won more games last season but he wasn't and that softens the blow of his leaving a bit.
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Re: Non-conference schedule released

Post by UltimateVUFan »

Thanks for the great analysis (as always), Jason.
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