For those over-zealous fans that think that our offense will be as good as the last two years - please calm yourselves. The Huskies five starters all averaged double figures this season, and I personally don’t expect that again for the 24-25 season. Nowell, Mahaney, McNeeley and Hoss all need to learn the offense - and if they do there’s no guarantee that they’ll run it as smoothly as this past season. Ball and Stewart have a leg up here, and don’t think that they won’t take advantage of that edge over the newcomers to carve out minutes for themselves. They’ll start, but do you expect them to fill it up like Tristen and Cam? McNeeley can score, but even Jordan Hawkins didn’t average double figures his freshman year coming off the bench. Do you think that McNeeley is better than Hawkins at this stage? Do you think that he’ll bump Ball or Stewart?
The guards will unlikely rebound as well as Newton, Spencer and Castle did this past year. The Huskies enjoyed a tremendous edge in rebounding all year, and that wasn’t solely due to Clingan.
I expect UConn to be one of the best teams in the nation in 2024-25. I also expect that their average margin of victory will be single digits. That doesn’t mean that they won’t 3-peat, but if they do I expect a closer score in the final. 77-74 sounds about right