RE: MBB vs. Prairie View
The SWAC has wins over Colorado, California, Washington State, Arizona State, UTSA, Dartmouth, Arkansas State, Wichita State, SFA, and a last second loss at then #14 TCU. Usually, they play all those types of games on the road, but to the Pac 12's credit, they ended up playing quite a few games on SWAC home courts.
They're not going to be one of the worst conferences in the country with the transfer portal firmly entrenched in NCAA basketball. PVAM's roster had 14 transfers I believe (all but two players). I'm not convinced they are going to be one of the contenders in the SWAC this year, although their leading scorer and rebounder has missed their last four games due to an injury I guess (he was in street clothes last night and looked close to returning). So maybe when he returns, they'll be a lot better offensively. They already were impressive defensively.
Turning to Rice, I know elw might find this hard to believe (actually he's hinted as much to this point) but I definitely see a better effort on our defense this season. In particular, I think Sheffield and Olivari are playing much better defense, and I also like what I see on the defensive end from the freshman Mason. We're still not where we need to be defensively, but at least there is more of an effort in that regard.
More concerning to me is our offense. We shot 37 percent in 3-pointers last year and are down to 32 percent this year (yes, we lost Pierre, but we added a few new shooters too). We've got 3 players under 30 percent in 3-point shooting, and to be honest, most of our 3-pointers are relatively uncontested shots. Hopefully, that can turn around because that's going to be a big issue if it doesn't.
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