This Bucknell team gets a lot of quality shots. Foulland is legitimate Center, a physical board presence. They have a good 3 pt shooting Forward in Thomas, and a quality Guard who leads the show in Brown… They beat Vanderbilt a tourney team last yr in Nashville, with basically the exact same roster… This will obviously be a tourney team again, and will go more than one and done this yr, although their tourney game against West Virginia last yr was a good game… Arkansas has their work cut out for them, good news is, Samford didn’t tire them much, that game was over at the half last night. Mike Anderson has done a phenomenal job developing his freshman from last yr. And Gafford has more than just talent, I sense he has some competitive heart in him…You can have all the talent in the world, which he does, but you gotta have heart to be great, I sense that about him. Arkansas has a winner in that kid…
Bucknell lost to Monmouth by 1 last night on the road. Which doesn’t mean that they can’t come in here and beat us, but still.
Speaking of losing at home, Indiana got blown out in Bloomington last night by Indiana State. Which is not expected to be good.
Yes they did…Monmouth won the MAAC last yr and 27 games last yr, they took South Carolina a Final Four team to OT in Columbia, and beat the crap out of Memphis in Memphis… We will have our hands full tomorrow evening…
It’s early, but the games do count now so we don’t want to lose non conference games at BWA. You can’t have excuses when playing at home so you have to win these games. They will probably drop at least one at the Phil Knight Tourney and possibly two so I don’t believe they can afford to lose any more than one more in the non confrerence before starting the much improved SEC schedule.
They will have to go at least .500 in a much improved overall conference this season to make the tournament which I’ll just tell you is not a lock that they will get there.
Does anyone know WTH is the matter with this Garland kid that he is not cleared medically to play basketball and was this ever a problem in his past? I want what’s best for the kid and his health, but I believe he was considered to be an impact Freshman this season with his size and now him not being available is going to affect the depth of Coach A’s rotation which he relies upon to wear the opponent down in the 2nd half of games.
Plus, the suspensions of a couple of PF’s isn’t helping us early either.
The SEC is much improved, one of the top conferences in the nation. Don’t know about Garland, I’m sure he will be cleared, probably precautionary, maybe a heart or concussion issue, which has to be monitored over time. I think Arkansas is a tourney team, probably better than last yr… They have six Sr’s back that have a bad taste in their mouth after losing a close one to the eventual NC Tarheels, Bailey is drastically improved, which should offset the loss of Cook. Being that this is a first offense, I would expect to get Cook back at some point probably in January. He will probably get a fine and be stuck with some serious community work…
My point is exactly that, the SEC is going to be very deep this season.
I would be surprised if we finish ahead of any of these four teams:
Florida, Kentucky, Missouri and Texas A&M.
Our season will be determined on where we land amongst the next four or five teams:
Arkansas, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia and Vanderbilt.
If we can end up anywhere from 4th - 6th in the final conference standings while not losing more than 3 non conference games then they should get back to the tournament, I just don’t think fans should be thinking they are owing to win the SEC with this roster. They’re getting better, but they aren’t that good yet. They are probably 1 more quality 6’9 or bigger player away from being really legit.
It should be an entertaining season as long as everyone is playing for the team and not for themselves.
As of right now, Arkansas is probably better than Mizzou and Kentucky. Kentucky is almost all freshman and do tend to struggle. Mizzou is just bigger than most teams, nothing really else that’s not overcomeable. A&M is legit, they are definitely the top team in the SEC right now. I haven’t seen Florida play yet. Alabama is good, but not great. Auburn, Georgia, and Vandy aren’t as good as us right now.