Says who? We had 5 seniors, all of whom outside of maybe Foz, regressed from the previous year. We had a guy come in and push for CUSA PoY in his first season and another guy who was a solid 12-15 ppg contributor. 3 freshmen contributed throughout. We most definitely had the players and the weak schedule to win at least 20 games. I'd also surmise that most people were expecting us to win 20 games after beating UNC. Winning 20 games should've been easy this season with our schedule.
Says anybody who actually watched the games and took off the green and gold shades for a few minutes. We beat Rutgers by 3, Troy by 12, FAMU by 12, and Northeastern by 5, and we got spanked by the worst Temple team I can remember. These were all in our first 8 D-1 games. Granted, we gave UNM a run for their money, and also had the two top 50 wins in this time frame, but you could tell there were issues at this point.
The issue was the two guys who came in from Juco were instantly the two best on the team. We had a bunch of guys who never learned or settled into their roles, and we had a season that reflected that. The schedule set up beautifully for us last year. The team on the floor didn't work out so well. Inconsistent play will get you inconsistent results.
You'll never convince me that that team last year should NOT have won 20 or more games. Look at our predictions thread that someone dug up at the end of the season. Everyone was consistently predicting around 20-23 wins. Not unreasonable given our weak schedule.
4 of our 5 seniors regressed significantly from the prior season. Haase has shown he's a near .500 coach who can't "coach up" the talent we have. Anderson and even Davis could coach up subpar talent. You could actually argue that Davis succeeded more with his less talented teams. I'm also not sold on Haase's motivational abilities after our horrible conference play and finish to the season. But he has set a solid foundation, and we will see how he does from here on.