Mens basketball 2023-24

[Polito]

Awesome W's for both, they should be excited and proud - and yep even I agree good for the league overall.

BUT make no mistake, the league IS STILL trash. And has been. And the data shows it. These games do not prove otherwise. They're one-offs. As I said last year, the CAA has a few really strong individual players, and we are seeing that play out with how well the leagues stars move on and move up - I watched Telfort show out for Butler the other night, kid looked tremendous. AE averaging nearly 17 a game, Timberlake starting for Kansas, it's pretty cool. Individual talent is being developed. But the LEAGUE is garbage. And it's days are numbered.

And you all have made this point yourselves by noting all the bad losses those name teams have already taken. No one has shown to be the clear-cut top dog. So I think instead of this showing the CAA is good, it's actually showing just how erratic the early part of the season is becoming because of the transfer portal. The up and down swings of even the top teams has been WILD - world beaters one day, embarrassed the next.

This to me shows that every team out there is going through their own 'figure themselves out' phase due to all the new pieces. EVERY team. And that leads to ANY team can win these first two months. We'll likely start to see things settle down in Jan, but for now it's the wild west.

This realization has helped to fuel my more measured approach - still passionate and a tad much yes lol, but I can see this more clearly now.

[EvanJ]

If it wasn't for the stupid expansion league would be probably ranked as well as any year since the likes of VCU and George Mason left

Unfortunately, that is not true. I took the mean KenPom value of the nine teams that did not join last season or this season, and it was -0.89, which would rank 15th. The CAA is 20th with -4.77, so the newest five teams cost the CAA five ranks and 3.88 points. The CAA's best KenPom rank after VCU, George Mason, Old Dominion, and Georgia State left was 10th in 2015-2016 when we won our first CAA regular season title and lost the Final to UNCW in overtime. The KenPom values are per 100 possessions, and I think that means 100 for each team. Since one team averages under 100 possessions per game, the expect score difference between two teams is less than the KenPom difference.

So in terms of the NET COC is 52, we're 85, Towson 130, UNCW 141, Drexel 189 and Delaware 224. Draw your own conclusions from these rankings.

The NET that sites have is for last season. The NCAA does not release the NET immediately, and I read that the first NET comes out tomorrow (December 4). Last season the CAA was worse in the NET than in the RPI.

We don't have any great wins or bad losses. Princeton is 8-0 for the first time in 57 years, and George Washington is 6-2. Princeton is the first team to win 5 away games. Duke is only 140th in the RPI with 3 losses and an average SOS. In the RPI, Princeton is 5th, George Washington is 32nd, and our best remaining opponent is UNCW in 72nd.

[triplec2195]

Thanks for pointing that out Evan didn't know that NET wasn't current but had looked at the RPI. Since we don't use the RPI any longer but follow the NET listed that. OK will keep an eye out for the first posting of the NET.

[stuball888]

We should start a separate thread

[Wags]

With respect to 3s, check out which team is among the Keep Shooting group:

https://twitter.com/ryanhammer09/status ... 5548045491

[dutchPride86]

Add another impressive Big East win for the CAA. Delaware just went into Xavier and won, dropping 87 points. Fwiw Xavier was ranked just behind us in the NET at 68, but they were a top 50 team on kenpom. Quality wins up and down the league now, we have to keep pace!

[triplec2195]

We are 2.5 point favorites yet ESPN only gives us a 49.3% chance of winning. Strange clearly a tossup.

[triplec2195]

Article about Tyler. https://themessenger.com/sports/tyler-t ... dy-claxton

[Wags]

Add another impressive Big East win for the CAA. Delaware just went into Xavier and won, dropping 87 points. Fwiw Xavier was ranked just behind us in the NET at 68, but they were a top 50 team on kenpom. Quality wins up and down the league now, we have to keep pace!

Those "one-offs" are becoming a lot more common. Add yet another one to the list.

Agree that the bottom of the conference is bad - partially to be expected with expansion (could improve over time). But the top looks strong so far with all of these notable wins. And we didn't even mention Monmouth (expected to be in that worse part of the league again this year) beating West Virginia earlier.

[HUSID80]

Agreed Wags, some very impressive wins...the question is will the new teams EVER get to the level of the older CAA teams? What is their commitment to becoming competitive...not too worried about Stony Brook and Monmouth, its the others I fear will not make the grade.

[Polito]

I take nothing away from the wins, I pump ours up anytime they happen, so it's def great for those programs and the CAA - just a hunch, but it feels like this is the most "name upsets" by this league in an OOC - excited to see HU take their shots in the big ones they have coming up!

Still, I don't think this league magically became great - the entire league lost all its top talent from last year... new guys are stepping in and up, but it's not like the CAA is all of a sudden world-beaters - I'm pretty confident this is the impact of the wild west transfer portal across the country - it's simply taking ALL teams longer to find themselves and figure out who they're going to be - that has opened the early season window like never before, so kudos to the CAA for being opportunistic - but every team is very up and down right now, and I think all these upsets are a key indicator of such.

Take the wins all day long, and definitely want HU to add to the indication!!

[Wags]

Agreed Wags, some very impressive wins...the question is will the new teams EVER get to the level of the older CAA teams? What is their commitment to becoming competitive...not too worried about Stony Brook and Monmouth, its the others I fear will not make the grade.

So you take it that there isn't really that much fight yet in the Fighting Camels? I would agree lol. It's going to take some time for those types of teams in the league, I think.

Mainly, it's Campbell, Hampton, and NC A&T. But if it's only those three that are awful out of a league of 14, that's not too bad. Every conference will have its tiers. The CAA definitely has several stronger teams at the top (thank goodness, HU included for several years now), the middle (which, if they're at least decent and trending up won't be bad) and the very bad at the bottom (no more than three of those is probably acceptable in a league of this size now). The league also needs others who are not so new - like W&M, Towson, and Elon - to step it up a little more.

[Wags]

Agreed Wags, some very impressive wins...the question is will the new teams EVER get to the level of the older CAA teams? What is their commitment to becoming competitive...not too worried about Stony Brook and Monmouth, its the others I fear will not make the grade.

So you take it that there isn't really that much fight yet in the Fighting Camels? I would agree lol. It's going to take some time for those types of teams in the league, I think.

Mainly, it's Campbell, Hampton, and NC A&T. But if it's only those three that are awful out of a league of 14, that's not too bad. Every conference will have its tiers. The CAA definitely has several stronger teams at the top (thank goodness, HU included for several years now), the middle (which, if they're at least decent and trending up won't be bad) and the very bad at the bottom (no more than three of those is probably acceptable in a league of this size now). The league also needs others who are not so new - like W&M, Towson, and Elon - to step it up a little more.

On cue, W&M gave the CAA its second win this season over our old friends ODU (which has now lost at Northeastern and W&M this year) and after Drexel's win over Xavier, the CAA beat the A10 again tonight with Towson posting a nice 10-point win over UMass (of course, Hofstra will get its shot at the A10 in its next game on Saturday in St. Louis).

[Wags]

It's still early, but the CAA is looking for another Top 25 upset on the ACC Network right now: Northeastern 30, #22 Virginia 22 in the final minute of the opening half.

[Wags]

High Point (six games after losing the Gulfcoast Showcase title to Hofstra) is also on the SEC Network right now, trailing by only two at Georgia with 7 1/2 left.

[JoeyBagODonuts1]

It's still early, but the CAA is looking for another Top 25 upset on the ACC Network right now: Northeastern 30, #22 Virginia 22 in the final minute of the opening half.

Close... Virginia wins 56-54. Northeastern led by as many as 13 in the 2nd half.

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[Wags]

It's still early, but the CAA is looking for another Top 25 upset on the ACC Network right now: Northeastern 30, #22 Virginia 22 in the final minute of the opening half.

Close... Virginia wins 56-54. Northeastern led by as many as 13 in the 2nd half.

They had a shot. Awful play out of a timeout - with the ball in front of their own bench, down 56-54, with :03.1 left, they through it across the court to the opposite corner. Very tough pass to handle, and sure enough, a turnover that pretty much ended it.

[dutchPride86]

NC A&T even won a game!

Hofstra cracked the top 100 in kenpom with their win today. Overall the conference has 5 teams in the top 125, 7 in the top 200, and 9 in the top 260. Is the conference what it was? No. Is the bottom of the conference embarrassingly bad? Yes. But I really do think the quality and parity at the top of the league this year is as good as its been in a while.

[Wags]

I'm concerned with all the attention being placed on Thomas that if he gets shut down that we won't have enough offensive output from this team. Of course that remains to be seen but the writing is on the wall for both Carlos and D Stone to up their offensive output. We probably will pick up substantial more scoring from the post with Fritz and Sunday but we don't know what we have with Wilmoth.

This is a very key point. This along with what kind of team defense they are going to play this year will probably be the two biggest factors in determining their season. In recent years, Hofstra has often had a CAA POY or CAA POY-in-the-running top option with at the very least, a Second-Team or Third-Team type of sidekick. As you are implying here, I'm not sure they have that sidekick this year (at least not going in, like usual), and if they don't, that will place a lot of pressure on Thomas, who I think is otherwise poised to slide into the No. 1 option role very well. The two you mentioned - Carlos & Dubar - seem to have to be the key. I still think they're okay if Carlos isn't scoring that much and is mainly dishing, getting others involved, helping to make the team greater than the sum of its parts, which I think he is capable of doing this year at an even greater level than before, but they desperately need Thomas' sidekick to emerge quickly this year. That will likely have to come from Dubar (who has yet to be a Second-Third or Third-Team selection, something he'll need to turn into to become Thomas' sidekick). He was their third-leading scorer last year, so like Thomas, he will have to move up a notch on the list as a reliable scoring option. Hopefully, he's up to that task. Plotnikov could also be a guy who steps up to help out with the scoring load. Expecting to see more minutes and more scoring from him. I think the potential is there off of last year. We know his energy will always at least be a constant. It's November 1st today, so we're about to start finding out a lot soon.

Glad to see they finally recognized Plotnikov's ability to help spark this team, and to give him the opportunity to do so, after I said it before the season started.