Preseason Mailbag

Every Sunday during the season we’ll open up the mailbag and answer your college hoops questions. Here’s our preseason edition.

If you had to bet on one team to finish the highest above their preseason KenPom rating, who would you choose? – @DeanWende1

So I had to do some research on this one to get an idea of what kind of teams make this jump and how high they actually move. Here’s who made the highest jump the previous five seasons.

The common theme among these five teams is significant roster turnover from the year prior – which in today’s world is fairly common. The one team that sticks out in the ballpark of those preseason rankings is Tulsa at 272. The Golden Hurricane were putrid in Eric Konkol’s first year, but they went out and got some nice pieces in the portal. Most notably, they brought in Cobe Williams and Keaston Willis from Konkol’s previous stop at Louisiana Tech. Both are very capable scorers who are familiar with Konkol’s system, so we should see some drastically improved results from Tulsa this season.

Will Cal, Stanford and SMU be able to crank up their basketball programs to a reasonable degree? Do they have any more incentive to than in the past? – @stick1817

All three schools jump to the ACC next year, which signals they’re at least thinking about the long-term viability of their sport football programs. Stanford had an opportunity to hire their famous (and very successful) alumnus Mark Madsen, but they opted to stick with Jerod Haase for another season. The Cardinal are once again a talented group on paper, but nothing over the last seven seasons suggests they’ll be anything more than mediocre. Bernard Muir’s hesitancy to act may cost Stanford in the long run.

Cal is probably the best situated out of the three schools. They took full advantage of Stanford’s misstep and landed Madsen as their coach of the future. He immediately brought in a promising portal haul that will make them competitive in the last year of the PAC12 as we know it. Cal used to be a regular tournament team in the 90s-00s and can return there quickly as an ACC school.

SMU is the wild card here. They’ve clearly got more money than God and can invest as little or as much as they want in the program. The facilities are good enough, the area is rich in talent and they have the financial backing to give anyone anything they want – but it’s always been football first. Rob Lanier is a solid coach that will win them plenty of games, but he’s not Larry Brown with a boatload of cash. SMU is capable, but I’m afraid basketball won’t be a priority until football starts winning big.

Will Michigan make the tourney? – @jjforheisman

I’m a firm believer in addition by subtraction and Michigan might be the ultimate case study of that this season. They lost some very good players from last year’s roster, but they also lost a collection of personalities that didn’t quite fit.

This team is going to live on the bubble this year, but the early returns from the scrimmages suggest the Wolverines might have a little cohesion and pop on offense. 115 points in 48 minutes against Marquette and 92 points against Northwood – not bad! I love Olivier Nkamhoua’s game and Dug McDaniel should be a lot more comfortable out there with another year of experience under his belt. It’ll be interesting to see how the team responds when Juwan Howard returns to the sideline. I’ll go out on a limb and say Michigan will make the tournament as one of the last four teams in.

Is Jesse Edwards in your top five bigs? – @DavidWo25276002

Full disclosure, this is a Jesse Edwards stan account. He’s amazing and if West Virginia has any semblance of success this season, he’ll deserve to be in the All-B12 conversation.

Is he top five though? Probably not – top ten though for sure. It’s difficult when some of the best players in the sport play the same position (Edey, Dickinson, Clingan, Filipowski, Bacot, etc.)

He does, however, have a top-five all time ESPN graphic.

Maui Invitational winner prediction? – @Caleb_Patry

The field for this year’s Maui Invitational is probably one of the most competitive in any MTE’s history. This bracket looks like an Elite 8 with a fun Cinderella. Here’s how I see it shaking out.

Quarterfinals

Tennessee over Syracuse

Purdue over Gonzaga

Kansas over Chaminade

Marquette over UCLA

Semifinals

Tennessee over Purdue

Marquette over Kansas

Finals

Tennessee over Marquette

Worst away locker room in the country? – @pgjeans

I reached out to the college basketball community for help with this question and they delivered once again. Here are some of the best answers.

Oregon State

“Our trainer would joke that our guys couldn’t walk barefoot without a tetanus shot. It’s the old football locker room. Horror movie.”

“Worst away locker room – Oregon State. Bottom of the barrel there.”

La Salle

“Tom Gola Arena is a dump (or was, heard they renovated part of it). Been several times. Locker room is four floors below the court in the basement. Have to go up and down stairs. There’s a pool on one of the floors in between so whole place smells like chlorine. Lockers are old metal rusted ones and the lacrosse or swim team was in there after we put our stuff in. They would give you this closet under the bleachers to use at halftime so you didn’t have to go all the way back down. I spent a year in the NEC and surprisingly no place was worse in that conference than LaSalle, even St. Francis BK was better (barely).”

“La Salle is like a janitor’s closet with a bathroom right off the corner of the baseline. Other option is down 2 flights of stairs.”

“Horrific.”

Minnesota

“Throwback aesthetics, nothing seems to have been upgraded for at least 20 years. Very narrow space without much room to operate. Everyone sort of on top of each other, no room to put bags down or stretch, etc. We won a big prime time game and didn’t even have space to celebrate!! Don’t recall there really being space to seat the players in rows, I think everyone was just in one line. Don’t recall whiteboard set up. On bright side it was relatively close to court, up a brief flight of stairs right by the student section.”

Pacific

“Tiny little room with some folding chairs, super hot, no space, outside the locker room was a super tight deck area. Also had no cell service and hard to get to from the court. Hands down worst visitor locker room in WCC.”

Columbia

“Columbia University visitor locker room is absolutely horrific. Really tiny and cramped, way too hot, relatively long walk away from the gym… and it’s outside the “Blue Gym” which is the rec center gym where all the regular kids hoop. Coaches are huddling and making adjustments 5 feet from a bunch of engineering students who have “next” in pickup.”

Mississippi State

“Mississippi State’s visitor locker room is a large closet with the smallest bathroom I’ve seen anywhere. 1 urinal and 1 toilet, also had 2 shower heads. The toilet was not functioning. The hall that led to the court was about 3 feet wide, had to all go out single file. The whiteboard was a good 30 years old and you could barely write on it to top things off.”

Georgia Southern

“Georgia Southern’s locker room wasn’t wide enough for everyone to stand during scout so only the head coach, scout coach and top 8 stayed in the locker room and everyone else went in the hall way.”

Fordham

“Fordham’s away locker room is ATROCIOUS. They don’t even have a designated space, so we’re always in the women’s volleyball locker room. Only one shower, and zero room for 15 basketball players to even walk in. Not to mention the gym is 100 years old and incredibly dingy.”

St. Peter’s

“The Yanatelli Center at St. Peter’s always took the cake for me. It’s downstairs and you share the locker room with a public pool and Sauna locker room. It smells like hot chlorine, but that’s nothing! In my 4 visits, I’m 4-4 on a 60+ year old naked man in our locker room, just hanging out while we were preparing for a game.”

Duke

“Duke’s locker room is terrible. Have to go down set of stairs, really tight space…smells like pee. Probably hasn’t been updated since the 90’s. Worst in the ACC for sure.”

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