The good news: We return more production than any other MAAC team, according to nycbuckets John Templon's calculations.
First, here is how much each team has returning according to RPM. 1.Fairfield – 78% 2.Iona – 72% 3.Monmouth – 67% 4.Rider – 63% 5.Niagara – 59% 6.Siena – 52% 7.Marist – 52% 8.Canisius – 49% 9.Manhattan – 44% 10.Saint Peter’s – 42% 11.Quinnipiac – 25%
To determine RPM (returning possession minutes)----You just add up the percentage of minutes played times the usage for each player. By combining playing time and on-court usage you get a real sense of how much production a team returns.
The bad news: Unfortunately, if you combine that returning production with our team's results the past two seasons plus other factors in a linear regression, we're projected for 6th in the league this season.
Optimists can take heart in the fact that last year this model predicted Rider for 10th and they finished 2nd. The model completely misses the impact of newcomers (transfers and freshmen).
Let’s first take a look at how a similar model did last season. Projected Finish. Team – Actual Finish 1.Siena – 8 2.Iona – 1 3.Manhattan – 3 4.Saint Peter’s – 7 5.Monmouth – 4 6.Quinnipiac – 6 7.Marist – 11 8.Fairfield – 10 9.Niagara – 9 10.Rider – 2 11.Canisius – 5
Let's hope admin hears this loud and clear: Fairfield has more returning firepower than any team in the MAAC. Then, add in one of highest ranked recruits in decades. Now add coaching into the mix. Where do we end up?
Last Edit: Jun 24, 2015 14:24:18 GMT -5 by stagparty
It strikes me that there are two important aspects to recruiting:
1. Getting good players. 2. Putting together a good team.
1 and 2 are not necessarily the same thing.
For example, you could accomplish #1 by getting a bunch of blue chip guards, but if you have no front court players to rebound and defend, your results will probably be mediocre.
You could accomplish #2 by getting a bunch of guys who work well together and cover all aspects of the game (scoring, ball handling, rebounding, defending, ...) but the results could be mediocre because the players simply are not as talented as their competition.
At this point, I have a feeling that, though the players coming in might be decent, the blending of different skills is not particularly well thought out (i.e. no interior scoring, too much emphasis on 3 point shooting, poor ball handling skills, a step slow, ... ). I guess we have to wait and see what happens, but things just feel out of whack.
Cooley won a ton of games without any blue chip recruits that I can recall. Yorell Hawkins was pretty highly regarded, but others like Needham and Johnsob were not big names coming in. Cooley said, many times, I want guys that really want to play here. And boy did his guys want to play. He had relatively few stars, and little firepower, but his guys played hard and played together. He filled all the roles that VA speaks of, except scoters. And they won. I hope our current guys want it as bad as Cooley's guys did. Can a coach instill desire, toughness competitiveness? Or does he need to find guys that already have those traits?
stags Thomas, I fear that the faithful are going to be reading cooley's name for a long time on this board as we continue this downward path with Syd "no" bid" Johnson at the helm of the hoop program. I hope I am wrong and things turnaround this season! Hopefully, I'll have a better handle after attending this weekends scheduled "meet the coaches/players barbeque".
We will certainly be returning lot of minutes from last year, but I wonder if those numbers posted by NYC buckets include Rose and Amadou. But returning minutes do not necessarily relates to FirePower. Certainly players like Curtis Cobb, Jerry Johnson and Scott King will not only help bring Firepower. But as far as VAStagman's statement:
It strikes me that there are two important aspects to recruiting:
1. Getting good players. 2. Putting together a good team.
1 and 2 are not necessarily the same thing.
We certainly need both to be a Top MAAC team, and we have not had a lot of "Good players". "Good" is a relative and subjective term, and I prefer to use "All-MAAC" as a criteria, because we need players that are Better than our MAAC opponents. I feel this year we do have players like Nelson, Marcus, Cobb, and Amadou can certainly be considered as possible All MAAC. That should put us in the top half of the MAAC, but to be in the Top Of the MAAC...... we have to be a good team. That falls on Sydney and do we have enough of Multi-Talented players, especially at the guard position. Cooley inherited 2 All-MAAC Guards in Han and MVS... and recruiting 1 in Needham. Sydney has not proved that he has recruited those ALL-MAAC Guards, but we have see it from Nelson and Cobb along with Good PG play..... this year.
I have never seen a team without good guards Win or play with Chemistry.
