Herb’s gone nowhere in 5 years. It makes zero sense to try and pat your totals with wins against Idaho St, UC Davis, Cal Poly etc. Besides, we already play enough crap teams in the WCC.
Notching 20 wins only to end the season as #175 is worthless.
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Personally I don’t think we need to ‘stack the schedule,’ but it’s nice, as a fan of the program, to have some P5 games, and other games of interest. It’s hard to get motivated to get down to Leavey to see our team play Alabama A&M or whatever for every single pre-conference game.
I understand those games have a place on the schedule for the team to work on things, build cohesion, and develop an identity, but for the fans to stay engaged we need fun matchups, difficult games, and see the team play matchups that might actually get a little national attention. I don’t see why the schedule can’t be balanced. I think Sierra’s comments a couple posts above lay out what would be ideal.
Personally I think this year’s team is up for a challenge. For the first time in a while I feel like this is a roster can be competitive. It’s a good combination of young talent and experienced upperclassmen. I hope the schedule can reflect where our expectations should be at for this season. It’s time.
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If I recall correctly, the plan last year wasn’t anything like what the schedule ended up being. The nature of mid major life is that your non-conference road schedule is probably going to be stronger than your home schedule. That’s true for most mid major programs because the better teams won’t play you on your home court.
As I’ve said before, I think given the number of inexperienced players and players that didn’t play any organized basketball at all last year, there’s going to be an adjustment period both to the reshuffled team and to playing competitively again, and I’d rather have that adjustment come while winning than losing.
Regardless, whatever the schedule is, I’ll be hoping first and most for an uninterrupted season where the team practices in the practice facility and plays home games on its home court.
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“First time in 20 years” <> “gone nowhere”.
Literally completely contradictory.
pretty much same season ending ranking… nowhere
Noob would rather SCU play USD and Portland X4 and skip Gonzaga and BYU altogether.
Definitely rather skip Gonzaga. Getting BYU at home for a change is nice and we might have a chance at them, but overall they’re apples to oranges with the rest of the conference.
Gonzaga would honestly be better off as a independent and BYU just uses the WCC as a place to park its sports so they can be independent in football.
Which only you care about. No recruits are coming in asking what the average computer ranking of the last 3 years was or something. Kendall Blue is a pretty smart kid and his mom has seen a lot as far as recruiting goes, but I just don’t think they’ll be asking and making judgments about some ranking number that doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t like top 75, to be generous.
Kids want to enjoy the experience on and off the court, they want a coach they can trust and who will help them achieve what they want out of college, they want teammates they can become friends with. Parents want a coach they can trust and that will provide a good environment for their son to develop and mature as a person, first and foremost, and then as a player.
It’s not a business trip and it’s not what a computer says you are. Increasingly this is the difference between major and mid major D1 – mid majors are still recruiting players with the intent of having them for 4 years, even if that doesn’t always happen. Major conference programs have pretty much given up on that idea – the only reason players stay 4 years at bigschool programs now is because they weren’t good enough to leave early, and weren’t bad enough to get completely buried on the bench.
Since I have a little time before my next meeting, let me bring in something about these much hallowed NET rankings that folks might not have noticed.
They reward running up the score. They don’t explicitly include MOV anymore, but if the computer doesn’t know anything other than end game efficiency numbers, it doesn’t know if you were better in the first 30 minutes or the last 10. So that influences everything, including its other major component – the team value index, which is based on the formula’s opinion of schedule, which is based on…efficiency of opponents and their schedule, etc. around and around it goes. So the next time you wonder “why isn’t Johnny Benchwarmer getting some time so the coach can see what he can do?”, recall this fact.
Only 1 team in the net top 150 (did not finish 175, or even close, no surprise that the poster that said that was wrong) had fewer home games than SCU (Drexel, which had 5). There’s very little arguing against SCU having been impacted by covid more than any team in the top 150 when you account for that and not having access to practice facilities.
You’re actually better off playing non D1 games than playing Q4 games (probably, the actual formula is shrouded in secrecy, but if there’s any point to having a Q4, then it’s punitive in nature). Think about then when you whine about scheduling Fresno Pacific or Bethesda. Probably those were more useful than playing at Cal Poly (understanding there were extenuating reasons for that).
The RPI was bad. Very bad. The NET rankings are better, but still pretty far from good for the spirit of competition and supporting D1 basketball. There are probably other issues with it, but ultimately as much as they try to dress it up, the formula is a reflection of someone’s opinion on what is important and what is good/bad.
Soon enough there will probably be a classification split anyway. Won’t take long for mid to majors to get sick of recruiting against schools that consider a sports car an educational benefit or something.
I stumbled upon this IG account which seems pretty cool.
They’ve been posting schedule updates and also mentioning recruits’ visits on their stories. So I thought I’d share the IG account with everyone.
Their last post says the Broncos will host Nevada on November 16th at home.
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Good find. Is this an official page or just someone clearly with inside access? I would think it is official except it clearly says in the description that it’s a fan account (the #1 fan account, to be precise :))
It doesn’t really matter, it’s great info anyway.
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Yes, from reading the description of the account, it doesn’t seem to be an official page, but definitely someone who follows the program closely and has some inside info (I expect, but who knows haha). I’m just happy to see someone doing something like that. I sometimes feel the program could do a better job with their social media accounts. I follow other schools on social media (mostly WCC schools), and they all post much more often. They’ve already interviewed the new players, covered their move-in day, did short videos about practices, etc. Maybe the Broncos will do the same. I guess not everyone is on campus yet.
Here’s another account that IG recommended to me about this guy who takes pics of some Broncos practices. Last post below:
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Unless rules have changed, and I don’t think they have, schools/coaches aren’t allowed to publicly comment on prospective recruits until they’ve signed LOI. So the BroncoHoops Insta can’t be an ‘official’ account. As noted, probably someone who ‘knows someone’ or just willing to spend the time scouring social media and websites for info.
The official Bronco Men’s hoops Insta is here: Santa Clara Men’s Basketball (@santaclarahoops) • Instagram photos and videos
More or less the same content they post on the Twitter account.
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OK well not hard to track down that jfung account lol.
Maybe we should stop here with this discovery and just enjoy the content. I don’t want to accidentally unmask someone that doesn’t want to be and risk them losing their platform to be able to provide content that helps in recruiting and connection to fans.
Upon further review, it looks like all of these pics are taken directly from the players’ grams, so may not be as inside an account as I thought, though you would have to know what you’re looking for to find them.
Either way, fun stuff.
Touching on a couple comments above. First, re: ‘8 newcomers’. As Sierra noted, high player is becoming somewhat the norm across CBB. You don’t even have to look beyond the WCC to find schools with a similar amount of turnover and newcomers. Pacific w/ 7 newcomers with maybe more to come, LMU w/ 7, USD w/ 8. Pepp with 7 newcomers incl 5 frosh (same as us), Portland with an entirely new roster, not a single returner.
More importantly, focusing on the ‘8 newcomers’ ignores what we DO have:
- 6 returning players, all regular rotation players, all averaged at least 15mins/game and all entering at least their 3 year under Sendek.
- 3 returning starters, plus Bediako who has started off/on and was the starter at the beginning of last season.
- top 3 scorers return along with our top defender (Jalen) and top 2 rebounders (Vrankic plus Bediako when you consider advanced rebounding metrics and factor in minutes played.) plus our leading shot blocker in Bediako.
- 3 of the 8 newcomers are veteran, experienced players incl 2 grad transfers.
Even if you ignore the the 5 incoming frosh you would still have a 9 man rotation and depth chart that may look something like:
1-PG: Pipes, Jalen, Tomley
2-SG: Jalen, Giordan, Pipes
3-SF: Justice, Jalen, Giordan
4-PF: Vrankic, Braun, Djuricic, Justice
5-C: Djuricic, Bediako, Vrankic
Lots of experience amongst those nine and plenty of familiarity with Sendek’s system. Again, the above rotation is without even considering the Frosh. I fully expect at least one and maybe as many as 2 or 3 of the Frosh to crack the regular playing rotation. Stewart seems the most likely, but would not be shocked at all if Besselink, Knapper or Tongue also get regular minutes. Holt seems like he might need a year to add strength and adjust to D1 ball.
Plenty of talent and experience on the roster, time for the excuses to end and instead expect a level of success that at least puts us in contention for an NIT birth…other WCC schools not named GU, BYU or SMC have done so in recent years, no reason we shouldn’t expect it.
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Good stuff '92. I haven’t really looked at smc for this next season, but they seem vulnerable to sliding back a couple of slots. I’ve been in a funk by the disappearance of professional baseball formerly played by the St Louis Cardinals (although the A’s are doing great), so I don’t know about the relative strengths of Pepp, LMU, or USF. Seems many on this forum have foreclosed on another season of Washington Generals, and look for something harder. I think Patty Mac listed a possibility filled with good competition. Hope so…
Sierra-
SMC returns most of their team but IMO it is the least talented roster SMC has seen in a long time. They had a decent year last season but that probably speaks more to Bennet’s coaching ability than to the talent level. Bottom line is they are very much beatable (as we did last season and the year prior). Probably most accurate to now view SMC as a favorite amongst the large middle of the pack in the WCC, no longer one of the ‘Big 3’.
Pepp will probably slide back with Kessler Edwards and Ross turning Pro. LMU returns most of their top players minus Markusson and has some decent transfers and frosh coming in so they should challenge for top half and prob have aspirations for 3rd/4th. USF will be interesting, returning most of their rotation; they were strong and athletic in the back court with Bouyeau and Shabazz but lived/died by the 3, dangerous when their abundant 3’s were falling but couldn’t win another way to win when their 3’s weren’t falling. And USF was horrendous in the post, w/ no physical presence, weak rebounding, etc. Seems Golden has tried to address this by bringing in 3 grad transfer post players…we’ll see if that pans out for them. Pacific’s fortunes will hang on whether Stoudamire sticks around or bolts for the Celtics asst. gig…if he leaves I see a precipitous drop for Pacific down to Portland’s level. I expect USD and Portland to flounder again.
So you’re saying you’d be happy with 7-9 and 6th in the conference? Fat lot of good that’s done USD since. That USD team was a very veteran team as well. But hey Pineiro and Carter did play on the WCC 3 on 3 team that finished 2nd, so that’s…something.
Can’t help but notice that most of those other teams you name are expected to be in the lower half of the conference other than LMU bc they have Eli Scott coming back.
If you don’t think experience and familiarity matters, I don’t know what to tell you. And again, several of SCU’s newcomers didn’t even play organized basketball last year because of covid.
Pipes is obviously an experienced player, albeit at a lower level (which itself will be an adjustment). Djuricic was mostly a bench player in the Ivy League (not that he can’t play, just that he isn’t as experienced as you might think looking at his class year). The rest of the newcomers is anyone’s guess.
I can think of a reason you shouldn’t expect an NIT berth…actually a number. 32. That’s the number of years since the last one. How and why would you “expect” something that hasn’t been done since before even people on the coaching staff were born (probably)? Sheesh. You can hope for it…sure, whatever. But expecting it? That seems a bit insane.
So I guess that’s the new standard to allow y’all to gripe no matter what – a standard no one has achieved since before the Berlin Wall fall.
I think St. Mary’s will be better than last year, maybe quite a bit better.
With as much as they have coming back they almost can’t not be. It’s like people don’t remember anymore that players as freshmen and sophomores and players as seniors can be very different.
So is your point that the NIT isn’t a good enough goal or that it’s too much of a reach? You seem to contradict your first couple paragraphs by the time you get to the end. Most of your contrarian posts on the various versions of this forum are because none of us is satisfied with the run of mediocre finishes of late. So maybe you can clarify what you mean? Is it unreasonable to want even a basic level of success or is it wrong to want such success because, hey, maybe it won’t create a dynasty after all?
I think that 92 is pretty much speaking for the vast majority of us here at this point: Herb can stay if he can start creating the success he promised when hired. But coaches don’t get the luxury of being so well compensated without the underlying risks of non-performance. If the two senses of “expect”–both standards for success and predictions for the future–don’t line up pretty closely and pretty soon, then I expect changes (using both meanings).
The 32 number is disingenuous because the Nash years (and multiple NCAA berths) came in between–but no arguing with the fact that it has been a long time. You move on from coaches that can’t deliver so that 25 years doesn’t become 32 years or 40 years. It’s Sendek’s job to end the streak of mediocrity, not the fans’ job to lower expectations.
Lastly, the team ended last season on pretty much their best basketball. There’s plenty of reason to hope for and even expect some success next season. Sendek has a solid roster, lots of experience, and a sparkling practice facility. Put up or shut up time.
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