2024 vs 2025

[drudy23]

UC will be very tough, and I could see a loss there. Our toughest game by far. I think we take care of business at home against Wake.

Those early season tournaments never go how you think, so could take an L there, but we have the best team in the field. TCU on the road is probably a coin flip, but again, X has the better team.

Cannot take an L in a buy game this year. That needs to stop moving forward except maybe once or twice a decade. We've already hit that mark.

[MHettel]

I think this offense could be as good as the one a couple years ago. Can’t say defensively what they might look like, but feels like they will be able to score with anyone. If Swain makes a bigger jump than expected we will be in for a great year.

I think the offense will be good, and maybe just as good as 2 years ago, but it will look different.

i think the passing 2 years ago is what made the offense great. we led the country in assists. and it was BALANCED. The inside passing between Free and Nunge was nifty. Colby, Boum and Kunk moved the ball well around the perimeter. Having 2 bigs that could score in the post made double teaming either difficult to risk, or deadly when the opponents did it.

Claude's assist rate as a Freshman in 21 minutes a game was 1.8. Hunter was only at 1.3 APG with the exact same minutes as Claude.

Throw out last years team. It was historically bad at passing out of the post, and who know how many entry passes got botched by the Euro butchers.

So this year, Free is a bright spot and obviously McKnight (again, I saying he will lead the BE in assists and be first team). The 3 transfer guards / wings really didnt post impressive assist numbers and they all played in up tempo situations (all teams ranked in top 50 for scoring).

Swain and Green didnt do much "assisting" last year, but again we were pretty saddled with an awful frontcourt and Dez was a one-on-one guy and there isnt alot of assists involved there.

last guy is Hugley (who is suddenly UBER critical and will play alot) and his career assist numbers are 1.1 in 23 Mpg.

So yeah. the offense is going to be good because of excellent outside shooting, and a ton of transition baskets and in spite of generally mediocre passers

Would love to be wrong on this, obviously If Miller gets 3-4 guys on this squad to average ~3 assist per game, then that twill be one hell of a coaching job.

[MHettel]

We honestly shouldn't lose more than 2 non-conference games with the potential to go unbeaten (which likely won't happen).

We should be at least a 22+ win team which should be good enough. Anything less than that, I might be on the ledge.

I hope it's better than that, and I think we have the potential to be better than that, but that's realistic.

I'm on the ledge because we have a glaring weakness. Rim protection was already our weakness, and even Traore was just decent at it. We had no rim protection behind Traore, which means now we have none. Interior defense is weakness #2, and again it was Traore that was filling that role with very little behind him. Offensive rebounding was a strength of Traore and we will miss him, but maybe Hugley and Free and Hunter can pick up the slack.

My fear is that it's very easy to gameplan against a team that has no interior defense and foul prone offensive minded players on the front line.

I love that fast break offense we are capable of, but made buckets by the opponents can really take that away.

And, we're going to rely heavily on the 3 this year. i expect that we'll lose at least 1 or 2 games that we should win just based on the ball not dropping that night.

[drudy23]

I'm on the ledge because we have a glaring weakness. Rim protection was already our weakness, and even Traore was just decent at it. We had no rim protection behind Traore, which means now we have none. Interior defense is weakness #2, and again it was Traore that was filling that role with very little behind him. Offensive rebounding was a strength of Traore and we will miss him, but maybe Hugley and Free and Hunter can pick up the slack.

My fear is that it's very easy to gameplan against a team that has no interior defense and foul prone offensive minded players on the front line.

I love that fast break offense we are capable of, but made buckets by the opponents can really take that away.

And, we're going to rely heavily on the 3 this year. i expect that we'll lose at least 1 or 2 games that we should win just based on the ball not dropping that night.

You're not wrong but no team outside of UConn is strong in every dimension. It's something that can be overcome with quality depth. Every team has weaknesses. This is where the brain on the sidelines matters. We now have a brain where 5 years prior it was relatively empty.

The roster last year simply wasn't good enough. End of story.

[Xville]

You're not wrong but no team outside of UConn is strong in every dimension. It's something that can be overcome with quality depth. Every team has weaknesses. This is where the brain on the sidelines matters. We now have a brain where 5 years prior it was relatively empty.

The roster last year simply wasn't good enough. End of story.

Yep agreed. If X can be like Bama and Illinois this year, they are going to be absolutely fine. Both of those teams were very limited defensively, especially in the paint and it didn't matter much. Just gotta put the biscuit in the basket enough.

[Xville]

Paul, who sees this team every single day, said the offensive flow and shooting is extremely impressive and enjoyable to watch. He also said even with Traore out, he still sees them in the 30-35 range on the defensive side.

For comparison purposes, as good as the team was two years ago, they still kinda sucked on the d side of the ball, 64 in kenpom. They were actually better on that side last year (45.)

I think this is just going to be a much more complete team than Sean has had since the return. ALL IN