That 1990 team was deeper and it had a ton of heart and great team chemistry. But this team has a lot of raw talent. Who was the highest rated recruit on that team? Chris Smith? How did he compare to his peers coming out of high school compared to how, say, Daniels did? It has been a long time so I may not remember it correctly but I think Chris was somewhere between 50 and 100. I don't recall any of the other guys as even being top 100 coming out of high school. Daniels was as high as #10, Omar was #58, Boat was #77, Napier was #62 and Nolan and Olander were both 3 star recruits which are at least as good as some of the guys we had coming off the bench (talent-wise) as we had on that 1990 team. The germans are as much of a wild-card as Henefeld was. Even Henefeld didn't really assert himself until about mid-way through that season. No one knew he was going to be that good. And, really, it was more how great of a fit he was for that team than it was his raw talent which really mattered.
Look, we will lack size this year and that will kill this team against some of the teams they face with talented fronts. Worst case scenario is that we have to throw Olander and Wolf out there at center. Honestly, I think Tyler will do fine in most cases and, hopefully, Wolf has been working hard on his game as well. Daniels can play the 4 but may suffer against some of the stronger 4s he plays against. The back court is actually pretty talented. The lack of depth will be the biggest issue. But I still say this team has decent talent. The chemistry and development of the bench players is the big challenege. Get the chemistry anywhere close to what they had in 1990 and we will win a lot of games. I never said they will win the Big East regular season or anything close to that. I just think it won't be the trainwreck some people are assuming it will be. And if we see effort like the 1990 team gave, they will be a blast to watch, win or lose.
