sine qua non

Every other year you need to sign a freshman center and a freshman point guard. Can't have too many of those.

RECRUITING CLASS

I like our recruiting class this year. First of all, they are all freshmen (at least so far). How long has it been since that was true. Since we expect to have all five positions covered next season, that makes good sense. Second, the class includes a point guard, a scorer, and a center. Nice combination. Who knows how freshmen will pan out, but long term I feel a lot better bringing in promising freshmen than having to plug holes with jucos, even though we have had some outstanding JC players. Second, the two guards look to know how to score, and that is always a plus.

Heading into the season

We have perhaps more question marks after the exhibition game than we had before. What is the deal with this team? Was the Harding game a complete abberation, or did it reveal fatal flaws in the team? Who knows? And, I don't know if we will know any more after the Miss State game, because logically they should come close to blowing us out. It may take a good while to know how good this team really is.

Finally!

The season is here!

Cautiously optimistic

Based upon the feedback we have gotten so far on this team (precious little), I have moved from being pretty pessimistic to being cautiously optimistic. I am not suggesting that I think we will be in the top tier of the SBC, but I think we might be able to move to being on the top edge of the middle of the pack. Considering what we lost, that will be an accomplishment. If we were to be one of the top 3-4 teams in the conference, that would mean Shields has done one of his best coaching jobs and that he has significantly upgraded our incoming talent. I would like to hope that is the case, but we'll wait and see.

Why I don't like run and gun

People sometimes seem amazed that I do not prefer wide-open, run-and-gun basketball. Here are the reasons:
1. Run-and-gun basketball will be sloppy, undisciplined basketball nine times out of ten. I do not like that which is sloppy and undisciplined.
2. Run-and-gun usually involves athletes that are very naturall gifted. The most deliberate style often tends to involve those who have less athletic prowess, but who have honed their skills by hard work.

basketball in Texas?

I can assure you that very few Texas Longhorn fans care much about the non-conference basketball season, because very few Texas Longhorn fans care about basketball, and during November and December football is still in progress. They only care about the conference season and post season in basketball because they do not really care about basketball. Much the same at Fayetteville.