Talk About the First 10 Games | The Boneyard

Talk About the First 10 Games

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Lets assume the Nov Dec schedule happens as planned. What are your thoughts?

With so many players to integrate, I like 2 easy games against Central & Hartford to get our feet wet. Step up a level to a lower power conference team with Vanderbilt, then play a team with 7ft (USC) or 7'2 (BYU) centers that are key to their teams. It will be instructive if we play those centers straight up with our bigs, or, try to take them out of the game with end to end play. NC St is a solid game for status and future seeding if we can win it. I think these games are the right mix for this team to get organized. The negative is that we are starting off with higher early rankings than any of them, so a loss hurts us a bit, and more than 1 loss could really hurt seeding later.

Starting the Big East with St John's pressure will be a new style to play against. Will our bigs be an advantage, or will we be forced to match small ball. Georgetown we should win but I have liked Wahab to date. Providence apparently in the eyes of others will be more of a test than I feel they will. I also feel Creighton is going to have problems with us, and it gives us a chance for a signature win. Ending the first 10 games at Depaul I don't take as a gimme. If we are winning and confident then we will roll there. If we have been slow out of the box anything can happen.

I'm betting 8-2 with a Creighton win and 2 trip ups with relatively equal teams. 7-3 is also realistic but I'll admit disappointment with anything worse than 7-3 unless there are games where players were held out. As a believer in this team, 9-1 is possible, but 10-0 is unlikely given the team's stage of building identity, (even though I don't think any of these 10 teams truely fields a better squad).
 
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We will likely be favored in our first 7 games and if we play well early on could be favorites in 10/10. I think 7-3 or 8-2 sounds about right.
 
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Use the tune-up games to experiment with lineups.

Sacred Heart returns 0% of its frontcourt, so they'll be more dependent on spacing and driving. CCSU is a smaller team too, so good teams to experiment with smaller, quicker lineups needed against Creighton and Villanova.

Two of Hartford's better players are 6'10 with one being a perimeter threat and one a more crafty center on the block. Great team to experiment with bigger lineups needed against a team like Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette...
 
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Teams with more returning players, and those that figure out roles sooner, will have an advantage with the high density of games. I love our talent, but we do have a quite a bit of new pieces to sort out. I like that we have the local CT non-conf games to really experiment and build some real game chemistry.

I wouldn't be surprised if the early Big East games we're penciling as wins are tougher/closer than we think. In particular, I'm interested to see who guards the opponent's best perimeter player. Last year it was a no brainer answer with CV. I foresee us missing his toughness and D early on.
 
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Does anyone have our schedule? I can't find it anywhere
Besides the december big east games that have been announced, pretty sure it's just speculation at this point.
As far as I can tell, this is the schedule (for now). Sounds like they’re trying to schedule another game between NC State and Big East starting up. Could be Sacred Heart or possibly another team from Mohegan, just not 100% sure who will still be there by 12/6 -12/9ish.

 

crazyUCfan23

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As far as I can tell, this is the schedule (for now). Sounds like they’re trying to schedule another game between NC State and Big East starting up. Could be Sacred Heart or possibly another team from Mohegan, just not 100% sure who will still be there by 12/6 -12/9ish.


I hadn't seen this, thanks!
 
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CCSU- W
Hartford- W
Vanderbilt- W
USC- L
NC State- L
Sacred Heart?- W
SJU- W
Gtown- W
PC- L
Creighton-L
Depaul-W

7-4 and i'll be as happy about the team as i've been in 6 years
 
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CCSU- W
Hartford- W
Vanderbilt- W
USC- L
NC State- L
Sacred Heart?- W
SJU- W
Gtown- W
PC- L
Creighton-L
Depaul-W

7-4 and i'll be as happy about the team as i've been in 6 years
Would 9-2 make you happier??
 
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Fair, but one can argue that's conservative. We're a better team than NC State and USC.
intentionally conservative but of the 4 Ls i think PC and NC St are tossups. Creighton obviously a Final 4 contender but USC had the #7 recruiting class in 2019. While they lost okongwu they replaced him with evan mobley the #1 C in the country so they could/should improve on a 22-9 season
 
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intentionally conservative but of the 4 Ls i think PC and NC St are closest to tossups. Creighton obviously a Final 4 contender but USC had the #7 recruiting class in 2019. While they lost okongwu they replaced him with evan mobley the #1 C in the country so they could/should improve on a 22-9 season
All good points but USC has a lot of question marks entering the season.

I can see USC jell by the second half of the season, but six of their nine scholarship players are either transfers or freshmen. The elder Mobley and Ethan Anderson were both 20 mpg players, but they are the only returnees that averaged more than 7 mpg in 19/20. USC is returning only 14.2 ppg.
 
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If we're talking resume I think I'd rather have BYU than USC in the Legends Classic championship game, just sayin'.. Either way strong frontcourts from both of them. 7-3 would be sufficient, anything higher would be remarkable.
 
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intentionally conservative but of the 4 Ls i think PC and NC St are closest to tossups. Creighton obviously a Final 4 contender but USC had the #7 recruiting class in 2019. While they lost okongwu they replaced him with evan mobley the #1 C in the country so they could/should improve on a 22-9 season
My two cents..We win either NCSt or USC..And either PC or Creighton.. I'll let you guys fight it out..Just don't see more than two losses..Keep in mind.. AA should be rounding into playing shape by the time we're playing PC/Creighton..
 
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My two cents..We win either NCSt or USC..And either PC or Creighton.. I'll let you guys fight it out..Just don't see more than two losses..Keep in mind.. AA should be rounding into playing shape by the time we're playing PC/Creighton..
We have PTSD. We’re expected to beat USC and NC State
 
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CCSU- W
Hartford- W
Vanderbilt- W
USC- L
NC State- L
Sacred Heart?- W
SJU- W
Gtown- W
PC- L
Creighton-L
Depaul-W

7-4 and i'll be as happy about the team as i've been in 6 years
Back to back loses to USC and NC State would be really disappointing. Nobody would be happy with that and a 7-4 start.
 
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If we beat Vanderbilt (counting on it), I think we will be playing BYU. Haarms is better than 2 Mobley's. I have more confidence playing USC because they always seem to find a way to underachieve. BYU on the other hand is always a fundamentally sound unflashy team like Butler.
 
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CCSU- W
Hartford- W
Vanderbilt- W
USC- L
NC State- L
Sacred Heart?- W
SJU- W
Gtown- W
PC- L
Creighton-L
Depaul-W

7-4 and i'll be as happy about the team as i've been in 6 years
Happy? We’d be 0-4 in “statement” games. If we’re gonna proclaim all over the internet that UConn’s back, we’ve gotta at least go 2-2 in these games
 
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Happy?
a 3-2 start in the BE is nothing to be ashamed about but i should have clarified i still think we finish 3rd in the conference after getting off to a slow start, at least relative to expectations. just tempering my expectations early on.
 
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Back to back loses to USC and NC State would be really disappointing. Nobody would be happy with that and a 7-4 start.

8-3 or better has to be our standard. Give us one "wtf" loss and blame it on new pieces and the 2 weeks off from practice.
 

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We shouldn’t lose to Nc state or USC
We definitely shouldn't lose to both. I think we actually beat both those teams. But I also thought we were a tournament team starting last year.
 

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