Article: 2018-19 Team Prediction

M

MBaldi

Well-known member
I’m sure there will be plenty of articles following ‘media day’ later today, but below is a link to an article from this morning. Overall pretty optimistic and fair. I do think the author is a little hard on Roberts (raising questions about his ability to play important back-up minutes in the front court), but a pretty well-written piece. It’s nice to read articles written by authors who, at the very least, are knowledgeable about team personnel/composition. I’m often surprised to see articles by so-called experts who are oblivious about basic facts.

[URL][URL]https://www.google.com/am...l-18-19-season-preview-for-the-red-storm/amp/[/URL][/URL]
 
I think the article was well written and did an excellent job. I thought it was accurate and on point.
 
Thanks for posting this. It is a very comprehensive and well thought out analysis of our team. I think that the writer clearly knows St. John's basketball.. He hit just about all of the relevant points.

BTW I think the writer is right that Roberts is a huge question mark but it does not mean he can't contribute. He is the only player besides Keita who has traditional 4/5 size and he also has the athletic potential to develop quickly. Clark is more of a traditional 3 who plays 4/5 because of the lack of players at those positions on our roster. That said if we need to go big, how quickly Roberts develops will be key in my opinion. If Keita were to go down due to injury or even in a game where he is in foul trouble then Roberts ability to contribute or not contribute will be greatly magnified.

Now perhaps we will just play smaller positionless basketball and not need the type of traditional 4/5 to be effective. That is a distinctly possible and given our roster composition could very well be the game plan for this year.
 
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Nice article, but 15 minutes a game for Roberts? No way. Coach has plenty of long and athletic players in the 6'5" range that will provide help on the boards when Keita is on the bench.
 
Two points here.

1) The writer says if we don’t go undefeated in OOC play it would be disappointing. Unless Zion Williamson, Cameron Reddish and RJ Barrett uses a sick day I don’t think we’re beating Duke this year. Especially since it’s a camron indoor stadium and Duke we’ll be seeking revenge.

2) I think he maybe selling LJ Figueroa short with his 6-7 point per game average. Multiple people have said that LJ Figueroa has looked like the best player on the court (multiple times). I really think Figgy is going to be a 15-17 PPG player.
 
[quote="Sju grad 13" post=298178]Two points here.

1) The writer says if we don’t go undefeated in OOC play it would be disappointing. Unless Zion Williamson, Cameron Reddish and RJ Barrett uses a sick day I don’t think we’re beating Duke this year. Especially since it’s a camron indoor stadium and Duke we’ll be seeking revenge.

2) I think he maybe selling LJ Figueroa short with his 6-7 point per game average. Multiple people have said that LJ Figueroa has looked like the best player on the court (multiple times). I really think Figgy is going to be a 15-17 PPG player.[/quote]

15-17 ppg for LJ is crazy. Maybe next year. Too many options.
 
I agree that this is an excellent piece by someone who knows our team. There are three points I'd quibble with, two of which others have already pointed out:

1. I've not seen him play but if others reports (including Mullin) are accurate, I'd be surprised if Figgy doesn't average double figures in scoring (or closer to it than 6-7 ppg);

2. Do not agree that Roberts needs to play 15 mpg;

3. Think he seriously undersells Trimble and his role this year.

Otherwise, I think article is right on.
 
Agree a very comprehensive and well-written article.

Also agree Trimble may have a greater role than anticipated.

Think we need to pump the brakes a bit on the OOC schedule. Is it award winning? Clearly not. Are we likely to get points just for the teams on the schedule regardless of result? No and we'll need to do damage against it to have a good case in March. Was this conversation probably incredibly easily avoidable by turning 1-2 of the 300+ ranked team games into moderate top 150? Likely, and from my perspective that's really the issue with the schedule, not the lack of presence of premium teams but the volume (7 or so) of low majors. Turn that into 5 and add 2 more teams on the Temple/VCU/GT/Rutgers level (or frankly even a little lower) in exchange and this probably isn't as notable.

But I think the OOC being so weak (and our expected performance against it) is drifting slightly into a narrative now.

Duke is not an unwinnable game but an expected loss at Cameron. We would do incredibly well to get out of @Rutgers (very difficult place to play), Temple/VCU (first back-to-back of season, 3rd game in 5 days, and on a neutral), and Georgia Tech (neutral) unscathed. I wouldn't sign for 2-1 but if that's what it ends up being I'll be happy enough it wasn't worse because it easily could be. And then you still have to manage 9 games where we should be heavily favored without incident, which hasn't been a traditional strength for SJU.

I think 12-1 is possible and 11-2 is a reasonable expectation. But I'm not sold that the schedule is as soft as it's sometimes being described that it's going to be easy to get to the latter.
 
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[quote="Sju grad 13" post=298178]Two points here.

1) The writer says if we don’t go undefeated in OOC play it would be disappointing. Unless Zion Williamson, Cameron Reddish and RJ Barrett uses a sick day I don’t think we’re beating Duke this year. Especially since it’s a camron indoor stadium and Duke we’ll be seeking revenge.

2) I think he maybe selling LJ Figueroa short with his 6-7 point per game average. Multiple people have said that LJ Figueroa has looked like the best player on the court (multiple times). I really think Figgy is going to be a 15-17 PPG player.[/quote]

The only thing that gives me a little bit of hope for the Duke game is that they are very young. A lot of freshman will be there main players. Freshman even great ones can be up and down in spots and the one and done model hasn't won anything lately. Also, there's only a couple of players on the team who remember last years game anyway.
 
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