True or false

Oooohhhhh Norm, you've done it now.

I say we finish second behind Baylor, perhaps third behind Baylor and OSU.

Finding a solid replacement for Jo is not likely to happen next year given our current roster and those girls coming in.

But that's just an informed guess. Anything could happen.
 
Oliver Hardy said:
I say we finish second behind Baylor, perhaps third behind Baylor and OSU.

Finding a solid replacement for Jo is not likely to happen next year given our current roster and those girls coming in.
Click to expand...

Baylor loses Griner, Hayden, Madden, Pope, and Williams. That's 61% of their minutes, 71% of their scoring, 67% of their rebounding. Or put another way, 5 of their top 6 scorers, and their top 5 rebounders. And you're worried about us replacing Jo, when Kaylon and Maddie will be back.

How on earth do you expect us to take you seriously?
 
AustinTXSooner said:
Baylor loses Griner, Hayden, Madden, Pope, and Williams. That's 61% of their minutes, 71% of their scoring, 67% of their rebounding. Or put another way, 5 of their top 6 scorers, and their top 5 rebounders. And you're worried about us replacing Jo, when Kaylon and Maddie will be back.

How on earth do you expect us to take you seriously?
Click to expand...

Are you picking OU to win the conference next year?
 
SoonerNorm said:
Are you picking OU to win the conference next year?
Click to expand...

I'm not worried about next year until this one is over. I'll have to look at all the teams in the conference, see who's leaving and who's coming in. That takes time. Sounds like an off-season task.
 
The top 4 teams should be Iowa State, Okie Lite, OU, and WVU. That is in alphabetical order, not any predicted finish. I hope the Sulkey one does not see this.
 
I think WVU could also be a factor next year, they are very quick and athletic. Unfortunately you cannot coach athleticism. I think we will be our usual selves with a little more experience. Should be a more interesting race post BG. Having Manning and KK will help but I do not see us winning the conference. Hope I am wrong.
 
ISU returning roster:

Nikki Moody
Hallie Christofferson
Nicole "Kidd" Blaskowsky (Austin)
Brynn Williamson
Ashley Hagedorn
Elly Arganbright
Fallon Ellis
Madison Baier
Amanda Zimmerman

OSU returning roster:

Anderson, Kamri
Atkins, Brittany
Bias, Tiffany
Donohoe, Liz
Jones, LaShawn
Martin, Brittney
Suttles, Kendra
Toben, Morgan

West Virginia returning roster:

Akilah Bethel
Christal Caldwell
Darius Faulk
Averee Fields
Brooke Hampton
Jess Harlee
Bria Holmes
Crystal Leary
Lanay Montgomery
Taylor Palmer
Linda Stepney

Baylor returning roster:

Sune Agbuke
Mariah Chandler
Chardonae Fuqua'
Kristina Higgins
Niya Johnson
Alexis Prince
Makenzie Robertson
Odyssey Sims

OU returning roster:

Kornet, Nicole
Ellenberg, Aaryn
Griffin, Nicole
Hook, Morgan
Manning, Maddie
Campbell, Sharane
Durrett, Portia
Williams, Eden
Williams, Kaylon
Dunn, Tara
 
gosooner2 said:
I think WVU could also be a factor next year, they are very quick and athletic. Unfortunately you cannot coach athleticism. I think we will be our usual selves with a little more experience. Should be a more interesting race post BG. Having Manning and KK will help but I do not see us winning the conference. Hope I am wrong.
Click to expand...

You certainly can't overlook a team that will flat guard you like WVU will. I love how they play defense...they just need to find a couple of more shooters and they will give us all fits.
 
We finished third this year. The two teams that finished above us lose their hearts and souls to graduation. We lost our heart and soul to injury before the conference play started, which cost us a spot this year, but will make us much tougher next year. It's going to be a wide open race, but I think we're the logical pick.
 
At this point, any predictions about next year are nothing more than wild-assed guesses - especially for teams that have players returning who missed this year due to injuries.

ISU has to replace Poppins & Prins. Baylor has to replace just about everything. We have players returning from injury who were starters early in 2012. WVU had a post player out all last year w/ a knee injury.

I never play the prediction game - especially not for next year.
 
I forgot about the 6-5 center from WVU. Wasn't she supposed to be their best player this year before she got hurt?
 
This talks about some of the injuries WVU endured this year:

MORGANTOWN — It never has been easy on Mike Carey, so why should the West Virginia University women’s basketball coach find it any different as he heads into today’s Big 12 Conference Tournament at 9:30 p.m. in Dallas after a first-round bye, his sixth-seeded Mountaineers facing No. 3 Oklahoma.

The game can be seen on the Fox Sports Network.

You know how it’s been for Carey. He inherited a program that was a bottom feeder in women’s basketball, built it as best he could but was always banging his head against the nation’s top team in Connecticut.

All that while there were injuries over and over, mostly knees, which would take away key players and keep his team from looking like he expected to when he was building it.

So this year the jump from the Big East to the Big 12 would make life easier?

Hardly. He winds up again in the conference with the most dominant team in women’s basketball, Baylor, and once again his team is decimated by injury, heading into this first tournament game without one of his key players, Jess Harlee, an All-Big 12 defensive choice, who became the third knee injury of the year in the final regular-season game against Texas.

“She tore her ACL and her MCL trying to save a ball from going out of bounds,” Carey said after getting the report from the medical team. “No contact, no nothing. Just turned it. It was at the far end. We saw it and there was no doubt in my mind what had happened. Needless to say, she’s out for the year.”

It’s a key loss in a lot of ways.

“We’ll miss her leadership. Someone else has to pick up that role,” Carey said.

Harlee was being used off the bench to provide instant energy. Now that’s gone, so Carey has to find another approach.

“Everyone has injuries and you say, ‘Man, that’s a shame,’ but when it affects you directly, it really is a shame,” he said.

His problem is that he really hasn’t had time to prepare for playing without Harlee.

“We can talk about it all we want, but we have to get on the floor. You don’t have a lot of time to make adjustments,” Carey said. “We couldn’t practice Wednesday, and by the time we got out of practice on Thursday we only had an hour on the floor.”

And it’s on the floor where the work must be done.

“When Jess went down we put different people in at the 4 and tried to run some plays, and we didn’t have any ball movement. We ran four or five plays and oh, that was a mess. I shouldn’t have tried that. That was not good,” Carey said.

“The problem is we haven’t had time to correct that. It is what it is. We have to probably not make so many adjustments … just play people in their positions and try to get away with that.”

In Oklahoma his team meets a solid outfit that was ranked much of the year and finished 21-9 with an 11-7 league record compared with WVU’s 17-12 and 9-9 marks.

The two teams split their games, Oklahoma winning on its home court, 71-68, and WVU winning at the Coliseum, 82-63. Taylor Palmer scored 30 for WVU in the loss while Christal Caldwell, the team’s leading scorer for the year and freshly named to the All-Big East first team, led the victory with 24 points.

The Sooners are led by Aaryn Ellenberg, the conference’s third top scorer with 19.0 points a game.

“Aaryn Ellenberg is as good as anyone in the league and can score in bunches. We have to try to keep the ball out of her hands. We can’t let her go off,” Carey said.

One problem Carey has to deal with is fatigue. The Mountaineers are making their fourth trip to Texas in the past month and second this week, a week in which they have traveled roughly 4,161 miles.

Carey will not let his team use that or the injury to Harlee as an excuse.

“It’s tournament time. You have to step up. There is no tomorrow now. We have to step up and play,” Carey said.
 
I'm also not too sure about ISU, having losing both Prins and Poppens. They still will have Christofferson who is hard for any team to match-up with. I'm kinda hoping Maddie will.

IMO it will be OSU & WVU at the top, with OU slightly behind. BU is losing 5 of their top 6, but they had a terrific recruiting class last year, most of whom couldn't crack the top 7-8. Prince looks really slick to me. They could be a wild card. TCU I don't imagine will be a top-tier team, but I think they were starting 2 frosh and 2 sophs so I expect them to be much more competitive next year.

UT, geez who knows. They are such underachievers, it's hard to bet on them any time. But they still have Fussell, and that Frosh center is just terrific. TT, like BU, loses almost all their starters to graduation.

To be, looks like it will be a VERY competitive year. Which likely means like this year, the Big XII will probably get screwed by the polls.
 
With us losing the best rebounder in the league, it makes me wonder if Kaylon will be able to become a dominate rebounder to replace Jo.
 
Look, Austin, I don't care if you take me seriously or not.

I gave Baylor the top ranking primarily because of Mulkey and Sims. Those two individuals are enough reason for my doing that.

I believe each of the top three or four teams are going to be closer in talent than they have been in years, even with the departures at ISU and BU.

We have a strong nucleus that has produced under difficult circumstances this year. But we are desperately short at the 3, 4, 5 spots, even if you consider Sharane's tremendous capabilities. Kay-Kay is coming off an achilles tear, which is one of the hardest injuries to overcome. Who knows how productive she's going to be?

We will be just as competitive as we have been this year. I think that makes us a solid pick for the 2 or 3 slot, but I think we are going to again have trouble with Baylor and OSU -- not to mention the mugging thugs at WVU.
 
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SoonerNorm said:
With us losing the best rebounder in the league, it makes me wonder if Kaylon will be able to become a dominate rebounder to replace Jo.
Click to expand...

She was pretty good as a freshman. Anyone know the recovery rate for Achilles injuries?
 
35TangoTango said:
We finished third this year. The two teams that finished above us lose their hearts and souls to graduation. We lost our heart and soul to injury before the conference play started, which cost us a spot this year, but will make us much tougher next year. It's going to be a wide open race, but I think we're the logical pick.
Click to expand...
This comes close.

OU finished third and has two established players that we know can compete at the D-1 level in addition to the recruting class that will join this year's team. That is a lot of addition.

Baylor? I don't know that those who are left will fluorish without Griner taking the pressure off.

Iowa State? They always seem to have some unknown recruits who can play. The loss of Poppens and Prins will really hurt. Who are the unknowns?

OSU finished fifth, and they lost Young. That is their most athletic player, the only established interior player. They need some recruiting luck again.

WV? Even if they had enough talent to compete, there is something about WV. They upset Notre Dame in South Bend a year ago. But, it was their only big win of the year, and they lost to a lot of teams they should have beaten. There is no pattern to WV that I can see. They took a 22 point lead on OU, and lost it. Both are the WV that I see.

I think there are questions about how far Maddie and Kaylon will come back this soon. There are also questions about how it affects them mentally. If they come back well, OU should be the favorite. If they don't, I tend to look at what Iowa State has. I would count on Bill filling the holes more than the coaches at OSU or WV. Kim needs another daughter.
 
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