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Message: [QUOTE="tykurez, post: 3380238, member: 63"] I’m curious to hear what others are feeling heading into conference play in year 2 of Hurley. Numbers-wise (kenpom) it’s a mixed bag but this team [I]feels[/I] like an improvement so far. Offensively, there’s a still-obvious hangover from the late Ollie years. Their adjusted offensive efficiency (95th) is lower than any year since 2007. This is mostly attributable to what point in the season it is as they’re still top-100 (for reference, last year they finished 85th). The last two Ollie years had them finishing > 150. Defensively, they shine. On pace for one of the better seasons since 2009, when they finished 3rd. Again, it’s early - so the numbers are inflated depending on how you look at it - but they’re currently ranked 34th in adjusted defensive efficiency. Hurley’s pressure defense + a legitimate shot blocking presence helps there. This could help us win a few more conference games this year. They finished 129th last year, which was worse than all but the very last Ollie year and you’d have to go back to 2001 to even get in the vicinity for a Calhoun year. Last year, they were 9-4 going into conference play, coming off a stomping by Nova. The major improvement though at the time was that they took care of the garbage teams in non-conference play. None of those games were really in question. But if I recall (other than the Syracuse game), none of the other non-conference games had the feeling like they would pull it off. Even the “closer” losses to Arizona and FSU. This year, they are minutes away from being 11-1 and a collective brain-fart away from being 12-0. The Avg Opp. Ranking might not be vastly improved so far (184 vs. 177) - but the eye test tells you this is a better squad. It feels like every year they stumble out of the AAC gate, last year no different losing to USF and UCF, so it’s unfortunate to start conference play this year @ Cincinnati because that’s going to be a tough one to pull out. But they way they’ve played the other sub-75 teams on the schedule so far leaves room for hope. [/QUOTE]

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