Relink to my hoops preview

I'm away on business travel so I thought I'd do a little recycling. Plus, the basketball season is starting so I wanted to get a little hoops content up here. After a really early hoops preview from Collegehoops.net I gave my thoughts on the team and the preview. I think this still basically applies because I have yet to see any games this season. More links on hoops to come in the next few days.

BTW, the Beavs offically signed their 4 recruits for next season and the official article is here:

Men's Basketball Announces Four Signings

---

From the July 31:

Collegehoops.net Top 144 - Oregon State Preview

Here is Joel Welser's prediction:

"...Projected Conference Rank: Losing David Lucas is huge and the loss of J.S. Nash doesn’t help either. Yet it is a solid team that will be built around Nick DeWitz, Chris Stephens, Sasa Cuic, Lamar Hurd and Jason Fontenet. There won’t be many easy games against Pac-10 opponents this year and the Beavers haven’t proven that they can do much of anything on the road. A few conference victories away from the Gill Coliseum would put OSU higher than 9th in the conference, but it will be tough for Jay John’s squad to pull that off. The bench has options and Kyle Jeffers would most likely get relegated to starting on the pine if OSU needed to play three guards with Jason Fontenet stepping into the starting role.

Projected Post-season Tournament: none..."


Yea, this is probably fairly accurate. Assuming no one makes any major improvements from last year and the newcomers don't make much of a splash I would predict they will be a little worse than last year. Probably just under .500. However, I think that people will improve and we should be able to at least sustain last year's level. Plus, everyone is in the tournament this year which means everyone has a better shot to win a first round game.

Looking at the new schedule, it does look a bit tough but about the same as last year. (Full Schedule)

BTW, we're not the only ones dealing with a big loss. Arizona (Frye, Stoudamire), ASU (Diogu), and Washington (Conroy, Robinson) all have pretty big holes to fill. Cal should be better with the return of their big man and Stanford is sure happy Hernandez stayed.

I predict the Beavs will parlay the confidence gained last season into a couple more road wins. If they get bigger crowds due to last season's success they may be able to repeat last seasons home record. That would be good, but they may not be able to win virtually every Pac-10 home game. So that would make it a wash.

It's a tough team to read and a lot depends on the success of players such as Jeffers, Hurd, and Angelo. Guys who haven't quite broken out to become major offensive threats. We need go to guys. Cuic and Stephens are go to guys as long as they can find some consistency. DeWitz is the go to guy. We need some breakout seasons from the new/young guys to really keep last season going and make a push for an even better season this year.

The first few games should be really revealing.


Go Beavs!