DavidsonCats.com

13th best team in North Carolina (behind Duke, UNC, NC St, Wake, UNCW, UNCA, UNCG, App St, ECU, High Point, Charlotte and Gardner-Webb)

14th best team in the A10 (ahead of only La Salle)

and 212th best team in Division 1

by SI.

https://www.si.com/college/2023/11/01/r ... in-big-ten

I guess we will just have to see about that.

We're better than that. Maybe 6th in NC, 160th overall. And perhaps comfortably better than 160th.

Great bulletin board material. Thanks, SI.

This thread has a whistling passed the graveyard feel to it. I hope I'm wrong and the Board can kick me around. After all I saw Jack Gibbs in high school and thought he wasn't a D1 player. So I have a track record of being totally wrong.

We may be good. We may suck. Let's play some *%$@+%* games and see.

The Cats were not good last year. Or at least the results were bad. Coming into the preseason, I had hopes that the team could be better. But the conditions I thought were necessary for that to be the case have not been met—or at least I haven’t seen/heard evidence that they’ve been met. I see SI’s ranking as unfortunately within the realm of possibility. I still expect the Cats to be better than 212, but I don’t expect them to be good. But we all have our own interpretations of “good” and “bad.” Many folks on here seemed to think last year’s results were “good” or at least “not bad.”

Acorn wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 01, 2023 3:00 pm

...Many folks on here seemed to think last year’s results were “good” or at least “not bad.”

Hmm. Losing home record against a really weak schedule. We were good enough that teams, even tough ones, had to dig deep to beat the Wildcats. And we had some good results. That win over San Francisco was sweet. But it didn't make up for getting destroyed by CofC. I think we'll be better this year.

Man alive, what a bunch of Debbie Downers.

Last year was probably our 2nd or 3rd worst season since 2000-01, so it’s fair to be disappointed. But we still finished .500, middle of the pack in the A-10 (against a tough league schedule) and around 130-150 range in many of the analytic rankings. I like many of you expect us to be better this year, not worse. But agreed that worse isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

People (media) think we’ll be worse this year because we lost Foster and Sam who were our two best offensive players. Ignoring that they were two of our less good defensive players. I think we’ll be better on both sides of the ball, but at the very least we’ll be better defensively. (Hard to be worse at three point shooting than last year’s team too)

Just given our program history, it’s kind of outrageous for us to be picked #212 and 14/15 in the league. We have never finished worse than 9th in the A-10, never finished below 190 in kenpom (goes back to 2002), and haven’t had a losing season since 2001. Don’t see why that should begin now. Even if we are worse than I expect, I see something like #175 as our floor.

Acorn wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 01, 2023 3:00 pm

Coming into the preseason, I had hopes that the team could be better. But the conditions I thought were necessary for that to be the case have not been met—or at least I haven’t seen/heard evidence that they’ve been met.

Care to elaborate on the conditions that haven't been met? And the evidence for the absence or inadequacy of said conditions?

That convinces me not to go to the NIT this year.

I must admit that the only year in the 21st Century when I had lower expectations of a Davidson basketball team was 2006-2007, after 4 of the 5 starters from the 2006 NCAA team graduated, and we had something like 26 ppg returning.

How did that team turn out?

MrMac wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 03, 2023 1:07 am

How did that team turn out?

To have a player who is a two-time NBA MVP (once unanimously), a four-time NBA champion, a NBA Finals MVP, a nine-time All-Star, a two-time scoring champion, and the record holder for most three-pointers ever in the NBA. So far.

I haven’t heard the same buzz about anyone that I heard about Mr. Curry. And no one at Red–Black game stood out to me like he did.

I remember watching the 2007-2008 Red-Black scrimmage and not being all that impressed.