I think people understandably need to see Moser prove that he can finish higher than the bottom tier in his conference.
To be fair, this is an individual pre-season list. Not a team list, but I still agree with your point.
Yes but I was also considering the fact that not many pollsters are predicting the team to have nearly as good a season as the board/OU media seem to be expecting. Porter’s track record doesn’t factor into the analytics, but it probably affects some of the human polls.
I, at least, was hoping for a Nijel Pack (or Xzayvier Brown sneak in) on 3rd team.
I think with Pack, he should be very reliable as long as he is healthy. I don't think I realized before we signed him how consistently good he has been from 3, and on high volume. And with Brown, you just hope he is one of the lower level guys who can adjust quickly. There seems to be a pretty wide range with those guys. Some of them don't miss a beat, and others can never make it work against bigger, faster, better players. He and Reid may be the X factors since it seems like there is a wide range of possibilities for both of them.
Pack.
Agree with this, though no matter what Reid does offensively, he is a serious upgrade on the defensive end of the floor. Going from Goodine to Reid is a gigantic difference in that regard. I believe Davis will be more consistent on that end than Moore was, and if Wague can stay on the court then he & Rogers should be a better situation than last year as well. I know the two guards may have their struggles defensively, but I think overall OU should be improved there.
I actually think the starters will be much better as a whole. There should be huge upgrades when comparing Reid and Davis to Duke and Goodine. And remember that Sam was, for some reason, our starter last year, so the center spot should see a fairly big bump. I do think that there is a chance that we struggle to replace Fears -- he had a slump in conference play but bounced back from that, so for about two-thirds of the season, he was a dynamic, game-changing presence. Not sure if we will have anyone who can regularly take over like that this season.
I just don’t know how many minutes are available whether he’s healthy or not. It’s a good problem to have though. Nwankwo obviously played at a different level but hit at a high clip too off a variety of attempts, whether they were off catch, iso, ball screens, etc.
if he is healthy he is a great shooter and one of the best defenders ..
My view is that it's been about 35 years since our team has actually ended up with a ton of depth, no matter what things look like in preseason. Not all the guys we expect to be good are going to actually "hit." So I feel like if Jones is healthy and lives up to what people said he looked like last fall before his injury, he is a guy who would be a big help off the bench.
i am going to pay for the exibiton game next Friday .. so i will be running the game thread ..
