Just took a look at our roster.

It's a bit like Groundhog Day, as we have only one junior and one senior scholarship player. We have three sophs and 8 freshmen, including a medical redshirt and (I'm guessing) 1-2 walk-ons.

So we have enough players to scrimmage full court 5-on-5, which is progress.

Three questions for the board:

1. Has anyone seen or heard reports of informal workouts? How do we look?

2. I have totally repressed my memory of last season. Is any of Guercy, Washington, or Wilson talented enough to get major minutes on a team with a winning record in CUSA?

3. Are these freshmen potential building blocks to rebuild the program?

Well one of the freshmen (Denzel Davis) is out for the year with an injury suffered during one of those exhibition games in Canada. I haven't heard anything but I'd say we'll certainly be improved with a larger roster. The freshmen appear to be pretty decent. I'd give Braun some credit on getting pretty good talent to Rice. He gets a failing grade on keeping them here however.

Based on the results from Canada, I'll predict Guercy, Washington and Ramljak are our starters when we go small. If we're going against a bigger team, we might put in one of the freshmen like Bender or Jackson into the starting lineup and bring Washington off the bench. Obi and Gearhart probably will be the starters up front with Drone and Firozgary as the back-ups. If Kapic is healthy (he didn't play in Canada), he'll be a factor too based on the brief bit I saw him last year. I'm not sure what to think of Wilson. He has the physical tools but needs to be more aggressive I'd say.

Guercy and Ramljak are our best two players. I wouldn't be surprised if several of our newcomers (Obi and Bender or Jackson?) are good enough to challenge for an all-conference newcomer team. I'm hopeful we can get back to double digit win totals again but it's tough to know how good the conference will be since there are so many new teams.

Talked with one of the assistants last night, and he said Kapic had a really good practice yesterday. I think we'll be much improved. Don't believe in picking win-loss records.

(10-04-2013 02:45 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'd give Braun some credit on getting pretty good talent to Rice. He gets a failing grade on keeping them here however.

We saw that the freshman class of Ennis, Reischelle, Debose, Ibrahim, and Gearhart was talented enough to enable us to be competitive.

Setting aside the debacle of hardship waivers for Kazimi and Oraby and the negative press associated with that, the wheels really started to come off when Ennis and Reischelle transferred.

That is what I meant by Groundhog Day. We once again have a very large freshman class with what read like impressive resumes.

We have one data point that says this year's freshman class isn't viewed as highly as the Ennis group--AFAIK, we have not given Braun another contract extension.

(10-04-2013 02:45 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'm hopeful we can get back to double digit win totals again

That sounds like pretty low expectations. We have 30 games on the schedule including a CUSA tourney first round.

We have two NAIA teams on the schedule (revenge game with UST!!) plus Marshall, Old Dominion, HBU, TAMU-CC, FAU, and UTSA were all pretty awful last year.

My thoughts are Braun better win some games this year and there better not be another mass exodus of players again.

Saw some of the video of the new guys and they look intriguing. I was around for Scott Thompson's fab five freshman so I don't mind playing young guys. Just want to win some games and let the guys have fun playing at Rice for a change.