Note on Christian in high school: Participated at the Adidas All-American Camp where he was among the top performers for the class of 2023, which included an impressive 39-point outing … A three-star prospect who signed with the Broncos over offers from Denver, TCU, UC Santa Barbara and Washington State.
Agree on Hammond. In his inconsistent and limited minutes last season Hammond showed some solid 1on1 defensive ability. Not necessarily a dominant lock-down defender like JWill but did a very solid job of simply staying in front of his man, moving his feet, moving well laterally, not giving up dribble penetration easily.
One thing we didn’t see from Hammond was consistent 3pt shooting and scoring. But as Sedulous notes he has demonstrated scoring ability in the past. He was a highly regarded shooter in high school. And I recall watching some lengthy highlight vids of him draining 3 after 3 as well as getting to the rim and scoring. So the scoring ability and mentality is there; if we see it materialize with the Broncos combined with decent D then we could see Hammond push for more PT. If not this season then next when Bal, Bryan and Stewart will all be gone.
That said, there is no shortage of talent on the guard and wing; assuming there aren’t a rash of injuries, some guys are going to be on the end of bench barely playing or not playing at all.
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First KenPom rankings are out.
#9 Gonzaga
#34 St Mary’s
#85 USF
#95 Santa Clara
#111 Washington St
#131 Loyola Marymount
#144 Oregon St
Thanks Kevin.
Hard to gripe with this initial ranking considering where we finished last season #109 on KenPom and #117 on Torvik.
Aside from the benefit of an additional year of experience for returning players, it’s hard to argue that this year’s roster is substantially better than last season:
- Subtract Marshall - 2nd leading scorer and top 3pt shooter in both % and makes.
- Subtract Caffaro - near tops in rebound rate (very close Tongue and Ensminger) and a strong post defender.
- Subtract Benjamin
- Add Mahi - lots of potential and hope for what he can contribute but he’s also never suited up in a D1 game; the bump in level of competition from JC is significant.
- Add Stewart - was great for us in 2022/23 but some injury risk or question marks and really struggled for LSU last season.
- Add Graves - not sure how much a frosh big will contribute and is presumably behind O’Neil, Tilly, Tongue, and maybe McEldon on the depth chart plus Ensminger (played half his time at the 4 last season).
We’re all optimistic and hopeful that this rendition of the Broncos can play up to the talent and ability we see on paper…but that didn’t happen last season with some frustrating losses and inconsistent play.
For me, my questions above (24 days ago) will remain until the Broncos prove otherwise on the court.
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WCC Media Day interview with Sendek, Bal, and O’Neil:
Santa Clara was picked 3rd in the WCC for the upcoming season. Bal and Stewart make the preseason first team.
The most interesting things in the preseason poll, I think, are:
(1) USF’s lone first place vote–certainly from Few or Bennett, but which one and why?
(2) The bunching of SMC, USF, and SCU. There’s clear consensus that Gonzaga is the best and that Wazzu and LMU will be the best of the bottom half. But the vote tallies are much tighter than expected for the race for 2nd. The coaches seem to think that SCU and USF have a real shot to knock the Gaels down a spot or two.
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I would like to think Bennett voted for someone else out of spite for Gonzaga leaving the conference.
Maybe other coaches think Mahaney leaving for UConn will be a big loss? While I appreciate the thought, I won’t believe SMC will finish below 2nd until it actually happens.
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Definitely. It could be Bennett throwing a vote to someone staying in the WCC out of principle or Few having doubts about SMC recovering fully from losing Mahaney and Jefferson.
Either way, it’s valuable to remember that it is SMC, not Gonzaga, that is the 2-time reigning WCC champion. The road to the title still runs through Spokane, but the Gaels have walked that road from beginning to end for two straight and bring back the reigning WCC POY and DPOY.
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SI Preview of “Best of the Rest” college basketball teams (i.e. teams outside the power conferences) includes the Broncos as an honorable mention and at least six (potentially seven) opponents next season. Really great scheduling.
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Overreaction time…Santa Clara falls barely, 75-77, to New Mexico in secret scrimmage.
Bal and Mahi led scoring with 15 each. Lots of turnovers for both squads. And the Bronco bench way outscored New Mexico’s second string.
Take from all this as much or as little as you will.
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From a 17-point loss to a single basket is going in the right direction. Herb went to his bench as early as 5 minutes into the game (that’s a good sign of his use of bench this year). Cam put up 8 (went 2 for 2 at the FT) and kept their big off the boards for Santa Clara to win a lot of rebounds.
I want to see the TO at the perimeter not be an issue this season.
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Definitely. And I took a look at where UNM is projected for the Mountain West. They were 2nd in the preseason poll, 1st in Torvik, 2nd in KenPom. The Three Man Weave guys picked UNM third.
So UNM is projected to be quite good–a likely tournament team. Hanging with them is a good sign.
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'femme- the article said 13 Broncos played. Are you willing to share who of the 14 didn’t play?
13 scholarships, 14 scholarship level players (I believe Kosy went off scholarship as Marshall did last year). And I guess if one or both of the true walk-ons Yarusso or Douyon played, then more than one of the scholarship level guys didn’t play.
Agree w/ Patty that you can’t overreact to these games. Teams are going to play all or most of their healthy players and use their whole bench in games like this. Rotations will be different and the bench shorter in real games.
That said…the turnovers are a concern. That was problem last season and contributed to inconsistent offensive output. There are a lot of offensive weapons on this squad but the offensive can’t perform at a high level and take advantage of those weapons if we turnover the ball a ton and give away possessions. Also appears we lost the rebounding battle by a handful.
On the positive side…good to see Mahi contributing already.
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I was thinking the same thing 92. I’d love to see the box score and distribution of minutes. I would guess Kosy played.
The article says 15 points each for Mahi and Bal and 45 points from the bench which would total SCUs 75. Which seems to indicate the other 3 starters didn’t score (presumably Tilly, O’Niel and Stewart?)
Edited to add that I’m excited at the prospect that Mahi’s skills appear to translate well to D1.
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Here’s a very, very slightly different write-up. More robust quotes from Pitino and a couple more UNM stat lines. Nothing new about the Broncos.
If I remember the rules correctly, teams can have two secret scrimmages or exhibitions in the preseason. SCU has wisely stopped doing exhibitions with non-D1 teams, electing to get experience against competitive squads (like UCLA last year). So there may be one more scrimmage that has happened or will happen. These things are secret in name only, so I would expect some info to leak if another scrimmage occurs.
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Kosy didn’t play. He was out with an injury. Tilly scored one basket. Other than Bal and Mahi - rest of scoring came off the bench.
Broncos need to get tougher on the boards. Cams job was to keep their big off of them - so he focused on his job. But the team as a whole needs to step up and not allow themselves to be pushed around.
So takeaways. Guys need to rebound better (lost that battle by just 3) and take better care of the ball at the top.
Positive. We have a strong bench so we can go deep.
We have another scrimmage next week closer to home against some good competition.
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Some more (alleged) WCC secret scrimmage results for overreaction material:
*UC Riverside 89 - 79 Pepperdine
*Washington State 87-78 Colorado State
*Loyola Marymount 76-54 Long Beach State
*San Francisco 80-79 Stanford
From the future SCU opponents list:
*Arizona State 79-75 San Jose State
Like 92 said, it’s very hazardous to draw much from these. But, all else being equal, you love to see projected 5th place WCC team like Wazzu, beating a pretty good MWC squad. USF topping Stanford? Hey, that might be a good sign. Better than the reverse, at least.
On the other hand, Pepperdine giving up almost 90 to UCR? Scary!
I remember in Herb’s worst season (year 2, I think), it was reported that Santa Clara lost by like 12 to Air Force in a secret scrimmage. So I much prefer the false comfort of playing UNM tough in The Pit.
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Both Pepperdine and Pacific have new coaches and almost entirely new rosters (each return just a single scholarship player). I imagine they’re still getting to know each others names…as such there will likely be some ugly early season results while they’re still figuring things out, working out rotations, etc. WSU (also a coaching change), Oregon State, Portland, and to a lessor degree USD and LMU also had a fair amount of roster turnover so guessing how good or bad they may be will be difficult to gauge. WSU is kind of unique; significant roster turnover with Kyle Smith departing but new coach David Riley brought along 5 guys from Eastern Washington, all starters and rotation guys included preseason all-league Cedric Coward. So there’s at least some system familiarity and some decent players backfilling WSU’s roster.
At least a few of these teams are likely to be competitive squads by the time WCC play rolls around. Even amongst the presumed bottom teams (Pacific, Pepp, Portland, USD), there is bound to be a team that surprises and coalesces in to a respectable squad.
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supposedly taking on Cal in a scrimmage this weekend to wrap up the thought a few posts above
should be a good benchmark and test with the athleticism they’ll be facing
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Boys played Cal today. If you tallied up the points - Santa Clara came ahead. Cam had double digits with a dunk, a 3 pointer and a few floaters. He said scoring was evenly distributed - so good thing to know we have multiple weapons.
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Apparently there was a Bronco Hoopfest event Friday evening. A preseason hype event that most programs conduct.
My Bronco kiddo attended. Free pizza and alcohol (kind of a surprise but assume they were diligent with checking ID’s).
Did some games and contests including w/ fans. No live scrimmage…presumably because they were playing Cal the next day.
Their guess was only ~200-300 attended, said it was still fun but would have been more exciting with better attendance.
We’ve lamented and discussed all the reasons why fan attendance is a challenge. Not sure what it would take to get better turnout for these events…free pizza and beer would have been enough for my friends back in the day.
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