They are starting, bit by bit, to drip out. Most of the really good ones, like Three Man Weave, won’t drop for another couple of weeks.
Here’s one I found this morning. It’s clearly a pretty improvised podcast between two friends (they could use a producer), but they’ve done a lot of research, and it’s a helpful primer on the incoming WCC personnel.
Feel free to add anything you come across over the next couple of months.
I am glad they are, in my opinion, underestimating our team. I think we will surprise everyone this year. Cannot wait to see these guys play.
I wouldn’t expect anyone to rank us very high pre-season.
We have zero returning starters and a playing rotation that may rely on as many as 5 transfers plus 8 new players overall, a 9th coming off a redshirt playing D1 ball for the first time, and so on.
There appears to be plenty of talent on the roster but the above leaves lots of questions…can/will the team gel?; how will roles and playing rotation shake out? (several may be unhappy with PT); can the new guys get up to speed on how Sendek wants/expects them to play? More questions and less certainty heading in to the season than I can recall.
Cams first year we were underestimated and ranked low. Despite the Josip injury, we prevailed and made it into the NIT. Cams second year they expected us to be in an even worse position with the departure of Josip, Pipes, and Williams - again, we prevailed and returned to the NIT. I am expecting an even better year this year. Sendek would be WISE to rotate the bench A LOT. This team is loaded with talent. This is not a team of about 3 key players with 3-4 backups. THIS YEAR, probably every position has 2 key players. This means the drop off is little to none. This also means we can run the daylights out of other teams and wear them down.
By the way - was ANYONE ELSE listening to this thing getting a Bill Murray “Caddyshack” vibe?
'femme- yes, 5 secs of listening to that dude and my mind immediately went to Bill Murray and ‘Cinderella story, out of nowhere, former groundskeeper, now about to become Master’s champ…’
I gotta admit - it was very distracting for me. All I could imagine was that gopher. lol
The Three Man Weave podcast preview is out. They take SCU at 4/5, fighting with USF and LMU. The pundits are pretty much all agreeing on a 4-tier WCC: (1) GU/SMC; (2) LMU/USF/SCU; (3) Portland; (4) Pacific/Pepp/USD.
Pretty good preview overall, though less glowing of a review of SCU’s transfer class than I’ve seen elsewhere. Tilly and Tongue get mentions as top returners and Tilly perhaps the breakout candidate for the whole conference.
Other random stuff:
(1) An interesting breakdown of Adama Bal as an NBA prospect, using his summer FIBA play to show strengths and weaknesses. The author makes the bold claim that SCU goes 3 straight years with an NBA drafted if Adama develops a couple areas of his game (like that mediocre off ball defense). Good antidote for the cold water from Three Man Weave.
(2) Random tweet from a Blue-Checker saying nice things about Santa Clara. What else is this part of the off-season for if not forging wild hopes and dreams for a yet-undefeated SCU squad?
Nice article on Coach Sendek from the folks at Mid-Major Madness.
The Almanac is out. This is the upstart alternative to magazines like Lindy’s and Blue Ribbon that features the Three Man Weave guys, plus Jeff Goodman and some other college basketball experts.
It’s $20 to read but honestly worth the money if you can spare it since it gives pretty in-depth previews of every. single. team. That includes roughly 9-10 paragraphs on our own Broncos.
I want to send them the business (and don’t want to run afoul of copyright issues), but I’ll say that the preview is pretty glowing about SCU’s talent overall, especially Bal, Tilly, Benjamin, and Bryan. But the preview acknowledges the challenges of integrating an entirely new starting 5 (though Tilly and Tongue were both basically playing starting minutes by season’s end). They point to SCU’s huge and talented front court and Sendek’s coaching as the two factors that will help stabilize the Broncos from a big drop while somewhat questioning the likelihood of repeating the success of the past two years with first-round draftees on the roster.
I recommend it!
These pundits are just taking jabs in the dark.
Zack Farmer of the Unofficial WCC Hoops Podcast spoke at length with one of the Three Man Weave guys about the WCC. His opinions are largely the same as those given at greater length in the 3MW podcast shared above, but he does say that SCU is the most intriguing team in the WCC due to an immense amount of talent but uncertainty whether all of that talent can gel quickly enough (or at all).
Not really my favorite preview and doesn’t cover any new ground from 3MW or the Scoop Media previews. But if you just have to have more preseason content, here’s another nascent podcast outlet trying its hand at conference previews:
The most interesting thing about these previews just seems to be the bigger picture of which SCU personnel get highlighted. Bal’s potential seems to always get mentioned. Sometimes the Tongue/Tilly frontcourt gets cited, often with a nod toward Caffaro and O’Neil. The guys above really like Jalen Benjamin. Herb seemed to want to talk up Carlos Marshall to 3MW. O’Neil and Bal have each had articles on their NBA-readiness. Of the possible starters, only Bryan seems to fly below the radar.
That says a lot about the depth of this SCU squad but also the lack of clarity (from the outside anyways) of its identity at this moment. There are probably at least a dozen reasonable combinations for the starting 5. Can’t remember that ever being the case before.