CollegeHoops.net Top 144 countdown -- 2008-09

[MacabreMob]

wow, that's great to see some significant respect for the Valley!!
So they are ranking 7 Valley teams in the top 134 spots!!

Last year T they had this:

in 8th place- and ranked #124 Indiana State
in 7th place- and ranked #109 ISU
in 6th place- and ranked #93 Missouri State
in 5th place- and ranked #76 UNI
in 4th place- and ranked #64 Wichita State
in 3rd place- and ranked #60 Creighton

[shockerfan13]

BG-10 you have the Valley kind of as I think he'll line them up.
but I think WSU will be near the bottom of the Valley, and the have absolutely NO experienced players remaining.
It is pretty rare for a bunch of newcomers to carry a team.





wow, that's great to see some significant respect for the Valley!!
So they are ranking 7 Valley teams in the top 134 spots!!


The Shockers will be very inexperienced this season, and LOSE their top four scorers from an 11-20 team,
and possibly will still be well under .500.
Last season 8 different Valley teams ended with RPI's better than 134
(Drake 10, ISU 33, Creighton 46, SIU 62, BU 105, Missouri State 123, Indiana State 128, UNI 131)

As far as Mt. St. Mary's at #135....I am surprised.
They play in a terrible conference, they were 18-14 last year, they lose their top scorer, and
they went 7-7 against a non-conference schedule that was weak and earned them a 205 RPI.
Their returing shooters were only 34% from 3-pt range, and that's going to go down with the longer 3-pt line.
Maybe there are the intangibles???




Recap...
134 Wichita State
135 Mt. St. Mary's
136 Oakland
137 Houston
138 UCSB
139 Winthrop
140 Fairfield
141 Charleston
142 St. John's
143 Alabama A&M
144 Colorado

Well WSU had a pretty darn young team the sweet 16 year. Lots of Sophmores and they lost 4 starters from the previous year. Now I'm not even CLOSE to predicting that kind of a year for this team as this is perhaps even younger than the team I just spoke of. But look at it this way too, WSU was only about 7 baskets from being a winning team last year and being in middle of the pack in the Valley. There really wasn't much competition in the practices as injuries had them down to playing with about 8 scholarship players total. This year alot of teams lost alot of experience so it puts about 6 teams in the same boat in the Valley. I'm not expecting the Shox to be in the top 3 at all this year, but Marshall is still a darn good coach and has the athleticism he needs to run his system. He picked up a couple VERY fine juco point guards, has a tremendous athlete in transfer AJ Hawkins (one of the better players in the A-10 by his sophmore year) and with Ramon Clemente leading the big men I could see this team as a middle of pack team this year. Plus you have an Aaron Ellis that played alot and kinda of broke out of his shell to show what he CAN do (even if for only 1 game) by scoring 19pts and pulling 9 rebounds in the Shox final game. He's had a year of D1 ball and a summer to prepare for next year.

Anyway, just another point of view and my 2 cents. I think the Valley is about as much of a toss up again this year as it was last year. It wouldn't surprise me to see another school that no one is considering to come up and fight for a top spot. GOTTA LOVE THE VALLEY!!!

[squirrel]

Mt. St. Mary's was young last year, and gained a lot of confidence. I don't know how good they'll be this year, as they lose only one player, but also their best player. They also won 10 road games last year, which is quite something for a team from the NEC.

[MacabreMob]

Mt. St. Scare-Me
(nothing aimed at you Squirrel.... I had a friend say that to me years ago when I was pointing them out one season and I thought it was a funny name)

LOL!

[Big Mike]

#130 is a team we walloped on their home court I don't think I've ever had the chance to use this in a sentence T'....walloped made me laugh thats all!

[brocks]

Ohio, another team Bradley thumped in the CBI, is at #129

http://www.collegehoopsnet.com/new/200809-ohio-bobcats-preview-129-42513

Summary

129 Ohio
130 Virginia
131 Central Florida
132 Rutgers
133 Lamar
134 Wichita State
135 Mt. St. Mary's
136 Oakland
137 Houston
138 UCSB
139 Winthrop
140 Fairfield
141 Charleston
142 St. John's
143 Alabama A&M
144 Colorado

Not sure I'd say "thumped" . . . that game was pretty hairy til the end.

[chitown fanatic]

I vote for the use of the word "shellacked' in the next common opponent that comes up in a sentence. "drubbed" is also another good word! Or maybe "pillaged"

[patrick_o'brian]

I like "demoralized" myself.

[brocks]

I'll settle for BEAT.

[MacabreMob]

I'll settle for any kind of win too. But I do enjoy the times when we can say things like "smoked", "whaled on", "crushed", or maybe even "Holy-Cowed" them.

[Bradleyguy10]

hmm..if they are already doing CBI teams..I'd be pretty surprised if we break 100..just imo

[Bradleyguy10]

wow if all I saw out of that was that this team "A" was in the big 10 and they have 3 guys returning that averaged over 10 ppg coming back (one of them as a freshmen)...I'd say they were sitting pretty..and definitely higher than #128..

but one line sums it up: "This year will not be a whole lot better, after all this is Northwestern we are talking about.."

[mportsch]

Northwestern should definitely be improved, and Carmody actually has things on the upswing at Northwestern with back-to-back decent recruiting classes. Michael Thompson, Craig Moore, and Kevin Coble actually form a pretty nice top 3 players, so the real question is who steps up to form the rest of the rotation. Fruendt, Shurna, Mirkovic, and Rowley all come in as 3-star recruits, so there's reason to believe they can be contributors before too long. I think 9th in the Big Ten this season sounds accurate - I assume that's ahead of Indiana and Iowa, who should both be awful.

They should continue to improve next year, as Craig Moore will be the only real loss. If things go right, Northwestern could be an NIT or CBI team in 2009-10.

[Da Coach]

The writer also suggests that Kyle Rowley will play and contributr right away, but I don't see it. He is big and slow, and really needs work to get to the level he needs to compete against some of the big bodies the Big Ten have. It's not impossible he could develop quickly, but I just don't see him playing a lot this year.
There is not much said about Nick Freundt. It will be interesting to see if he can contribute. They really need more shooters with that boring offense Carmody runs. In every game of theirs I saw last year, they had many possessions that came down to a futile, last second, heave by someone to beat the shot clock.

[MacabreMob]

In every game of theirs I saw last year, they had many possessions that came down to a futile, last second, heave by someone to beat the shot clock.

You confused me for a sec DC... I thought you were talking about UIUC. LOL!