https://cbbcentral.com/2020/10/27/2020-2...a-preview/

Another preview this one from College Basketball Central. They have the Dukes 7th.

CAA media for hoops is this Wed, Nov 11th

JMU picked 9th but Lewis picked as POY. I maintain if Matt wins POY we finish in the top 4 of the league otherwise he’ll just have good stats but someone else will win that award.

TJ Taylor gets a waiver to play immediately so we have a full compliment of guys this year. Here’s hoping TJ is as successful (albeit with no drama) as the last Wyoming transfer to JMU (Aj Davis).

In my opinion, JMU is better than 9th, but no higher than 5th. Lewis will be best player in league but i doubt he wins POY on a 5th place or lower team.

It is almost impossible for JMU to finish as low as 9th in the CAA this year unless there are multiple season ending injuries. Just competent coaching can get the team into the middle of the pack at 5th or 6th.
There are several wild cards with transfers who have limited contributions in college ball, but the TJ Taylor waiver is great news. He will play a lot and be a significant contributor.

None of the CAA teams have a ton returning and the single bid is wide open.

Also wonder if Hofstra will have a little trouble with a new head coach (Mihalich is out on leave due to an illness) and COC and Northeastern have a lot of new guys while Delaware lost some key cogs. My guess is Towson Delaware Hofstra Northeastern and Coc will still be solid but JMU should be able to compete with and beat those teams. Some people are high on Drexel but I don’t see it and I know Elon showed a lot last year and is a popular sleeper program in the league but they lost a lot and have some injuries. At the same time people have buried W&M due to their losses but I think they will be better than folks think.

Mensah is kind of important because last year guys like Painter and the Drexel big gave us trouble- Wilson was a bit undersized in the post as a 5.

It's absurd that JMU is picked 9th. If you listen to Byington's presser yesterday, he said he expects his team to get better throughout the season and compete for the CAA championship come tournament time. How does a team with the league's best player plus what JMU has added get picked that low? I posted about this before with respect to the losses across the league, which are monumental to say the least.

JMU has been down for a long time, but the Dukes have got to have one of the most talented rosters in the league at this point. I respect and like Mettlen, but even he picked them 8th or so. He also noted that he hadn't seen them practice at that point. He, if anyone, though, should know better than picking them 8th.

With Covid exploding, I'm concerned about the ability to get the season in at this point. That's the biggest obstacle that JMU faces in potentially competing for an NCAA berth.

P.S. Good to hear about Taylor...he's the one guy I thought would become eligible. He went to prep school for a year, was two years at Wyoming. I don't think he wants 6 years post high school to get in his 4 years of eligibility.

I think our 6 through 13 players will be best in the league. We have a lot of interchangeable parts.

I think the media has some fair reason to doubt us. Keatts, probably one of the strongest first years in recent memory won 9 more conference games over his predecessor. If Byington reaches that same turnaround, going on LY results, we'd place around 4th(Granted when Keatts did it, it resulted in a 4-way tie for first, but I'm considering that a really strange one-off). If you consider that 4th place a best case scenario, and also factor in a tough transition year due to covid, everyone is going to hedge against us. I think we have the coaches and players to make a splash though, but with even less games to find our groove, this year is the ultimate challenge for Byington. Also think the CAA is generally improving as a league right now. Hard to believe ppl believe W&M is going to place last after all the consistency they've had.

If you expect to be average, look at https://static.caasports.com/custompages...M#team.ind which is for Towson in 2006-2007 when Gary Neal average over 3 points more than Towson's next three highest scorers combined, and they went 15-17. He averaged 25.3 points, which was the fourth highest CAA season when he did it, and is now fifth after Justin Wright-Foreman's 2018-2019. In the 29 seasons from 1989-1990 through 2017-2018, it was the highest season. I'm a Hofstra fan, and Loren Stokes won POY in 2006-2007, but I thought Neal deserved it. Hofstra finished third in that regular season. Going back to now, one website picked Isaac Kante as POY, and another website picked Jalen Ray, who didn't make the First Team or Second Team. With Hofstra and some other teams, you could pick a guy for POY who turns out not to be the best on his team.

(11-11-2020 07:37 PM)NJDuke97 Wrote:  Also wonder if Hofstra will have a little trouble with a new head coach (Mihalich is out on leave due to an illness) and COC and Northeastern have a lot of new guys while Delaware lost some key cogs. My guess is Towson Delaware Hofstra Northeastern and Coc will still be solid but JMU should be able to compete with and beat those teams. Some people are high on Drexel but I don’t see it and I know Elon showed a lot last year and is a popular sleeper program in the league but they lost a lot and have some injuries. At the same time people have buried W&M due to their losses but I think they will be better than folks think.

Mensah is kind of important because last year guys like Painter and the Drexel big gave us trouble- Wilson was a bit undersized in the post as a 5.

Interim Coach Mike Farrelly has spent seven seasons at Hofstra, with six seasons as Assistant, and one season as Associate. I'd expect it to be less of an adjustment than a coach from another school. Hofstra won't say what's wrong with Mihalich, but in his teleconference Farrelly said Mihalich is "improving." In addition to returning three starters, Hofstra will rely on Shawndarius Cowart at PG. He was an elite JUCO player who averaged 13.2 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 6.5 assists last season. I'm not saying Cowart will play that well in Division I, but Isaac Kante, Jalen Ray, Tareq Coburn, and Cowart could be the best group of four teammates. Hofstra uses their bench so little that subs don't matter too much if the starters stay healthy. I was worried that using starters so much could make Mihalich the best coach if you're trying to lose the CAA Final because you have to win on three consecutive days, but Hofstra won last season. Other than stars Desure Buie and Eli Pemberton, Hofstra lost players who scored 21, 4, and 2 last season.

Towson lost their top three scorers and top three rebounders, which have Brian Fobbs and Nakye Sanders in common. Allen Betrand averaged 13.6 points and transferred. Their leading returning scorer is Jason Gibson, who averaged 8.4, but they add Zane Martin, who averaged 19.9 points three seasons ago and transferred to New Mexico and back.

Elon returns their second through eighth leading scorers, so why do you say they lost a lot? What injuries do they have?

Drexel's James Butler got a waiver to have his season where he played a little for Navy not count, which means he can play for Drexel this season and next season, and he's on pace to shatter David Robinson's CAA record of 1,314 rebounds. If he has two more seasons with 387 which he had last season, he will finish with 1,422, which would be 13th on the NCAA career list for careers starting 1973 or later not updated through 2019-2020 and not knowing if any other active players could get to 1,422 before him. Rebounds run in his family. As a senior, his sister broke the NCAA record for rebounds in a season, and she played for George Mason.

Teams lost enough players that no team can say they will be great just based on who they return. Below average starters, subs, freshmen, and transfers will matter a lot.

Some discussion on how difficult this season will be: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/college-bas...35252.html

Wasn’t sure where to put this but there has been some discussion around various players this year, rotations and who we didn’t see much of early on.

I saw an Instagram post today from Jalen Hodge that references that he is 10 months removed from ACL surgery. Just a reminder that this is a free year in terms of eligibility. I think in Hodge’s case, Taylor it’s been said is adjusting to a new style position, and we’ve seen that Mensah is a project- I wouldn’t expect much from those guys this year.

Christmas hopefully and Frederick to go with Morse, the freshmen, Lewis, Jacobs, Harvey, and Wooden is your more likely 10 man rotation.

I don’t see Christmas playing much. He was a disappointment for me last year and in the brief periods he has played this year, I don’t see a lot of energy from him. Wooden is the opposite. He showed promise last year and this year he is looking like he will be one of our top three scorers.

Give me guys with energy who will get after it. JMU hasn’t had a starting 5 with that since Nations Freshman year.