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"Way Too Early Top 25 Projections" From Dan Hanner

Goose

Goose

Hoops Moderator
Club Member
Junta Member
Statnerd stuff in this link, so beware.

http://basketball.realgm.com/article/232804/Way-Too-Early-Top-25-Projections

Interesting notes:

* CU is #18. That's with Dinwiddie returning. If Spencer returns, we'll return 99% of our minutes from the 2013-14 season. The only other team in the top 25 that's higher is Texas, who is returning all 100% of their minutes played.
* Four Pac-12 teams in the top 25 - Arizona at #1, CU at #18, UCLA at #23 and Utah at #25.
* Oregon and Stanford were listed as "just missing".
 
Here's one that has CU 10th.

10. COLORADO BUFFALOES
It has been reported that Spencer Dinwiddie is leaning towards entering the NBA Draft but I am assuming he will come to his senses and stay for his senior season. He missed most of this past season due to injury so if Tad Boyle gets him back, the Buffs will be stacked since every other major contributor returns.
 
jcatcher said:
Here's one that has CU 10th.

10. COLORADO BUFFALOES
It has been reported that Spencer Dinwiddie is leaning towards entering the NBA Draft but I am assuming he will come to his senses and stay for his senior season. He missed most of this past season due to injury so if Tad Boyle gets him back, the Buffs will be stacked since every other major contributor returns.
Click to expand...

Given that this person lists Spencer as a "guard" on the team list and not as the "point guard" I'll assume that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
 
Did you say Jan Hammer???

[video=youtube;jswHsTJQL_c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jswHsTJQL_c[/video]
 
Too much unknown about who is returning to put us in right now.
 
buffedup said:
ESPN doesn't even list Colorado as an honorable mention.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...-top-25-2014-15-men-college-basketball-season
Click to expand...

Without Spencer, they're probably right. Brennan and Goodman at ESPN are operating on the assumption that Spencer is out of here.
We've seen what next year's team will bring to the table if we don't have Spencer...and that is a team that can go about .500 in conference, make a reasonable conference tournament run, and be a middle of the pack seed in the dance. We already got half a season of basketball that showed us exactly what we'll have next year unless Collier and Miller come in and supplant some people by being totally ready to adapt to the college game from minute 1. Even if they get bigger and stronger in the offseason, is next year's team going to be better than this year? Will they be more talented?

This year's freshmen are going to have to get significantly better offensively in the offseason, otherwise it will continue to be the Ski-Scott-XJ show where the other team's defense just has to commit to double teaming Josh full time, and playing help defense on Ski and XJ to effectively shut down our entire offense. That should have meant Wes or XT (primarily Wes) should have been open to help get some offense going and get them to back off the other 3, but nobody sees Wes as an offensive threat, which he is more than willing to prove, and any team is going to make XT prove he is on before they commit to playing any defense against him on the perimeter. The last several games didn't get any better when you put the frosh in, see the combined 22 points from our bench in ALL 4 of the Pac-12 and NCAA tournament games combined (which includes the junktime 3 by Beau Gamble at the end of the Pitt game). If Spencer leaves, we are not even close to being a preseason top 25 team based on the evidence that this team gave all of the pollsters.

Defensively we may be good again next year, but unless that offense improves greatly we're not going to be able to outscore a lot of teams in conference or the better out of conference teams we'll play.
 
I think a top 15 ranking with the Mayor is fair.
A top 30 ranking without him is ludicrous.
 
Darth Snow said:
I think a top 15 ranking with the Mayor is fair.
A top 30 ranking without him is ludicrous.
Click to expand...


I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on this one. It's not so ludicrous if we get some development from Fletch, JHop and Thomas. Collier is, by most accounts, a special player who could have an immediate impact. Not much has to happen for CU to be a very solid basketball team next year, even without Spencer. We're obviously better with him than without, but I'm not subscribing to the theory that all is lost if he doesn't come back. I saw flashes of greatness without him this year. As Tad has repeatedly said, they expected to have to adjust to life without Spencer, they just didn't expect to have to do it so soon. The silver lining in his injury is that they had to learn a little quicker, which *should* make them better prepared next year. The learning curve won't be as steep.
 
Darth Snow said:
I think a top 15 ranking with the Mayor is fair.
A top 30 ranking without him is ludicrous.
Click to expand...

I agree. Unless you're looking at things through the lens of being a Buffs fan, there's no reason to pick a Spencer-free squad in the Top 30. A national writer with no bias should put the Buffs in the 35-50 range (depending on how highly he rates Collier).
 
Buffnik said:
I agree. Unless you're looking at things through the lens of being a Buffs fan, there's no reason to pick a Spencer-free squad in the Top 30. A national writer with no bias should put the Buffs in the 35-50 range (depending on how highly he rates Collier).
Click to expand...

While the young guys didn't show as much development as we would have liked by the end of the season, we are returning virtually 100% of our production outside of Dinwiddie, and adding some nice talent. Where would you say we ended the season rankings-wise, and why wouldn't we start it ahead of those numbers?
 
Sure, the team will still have many of the same flaws if Spencer doesn't come back, but what happens in the offseason is players work on their game and get a little better at each part of their game. That adds up to a few extra points per game each year. Even if we still are a poor 3 point shooting team and get stagnant on offense, there will still be an extra rebound here and there that we didn't get this year, a turnover that doesn't happen that did this year, etc. That all adds up to a significantly better team.
 
TimmyDUBs said:
While the young guys didn't show as much development as we would have liked by the end of the season, we are returning virtually 100% of our production outside of Dinwiddie, and adding some nice talent. Where would you say we ended the season rankings-wise, and why wouldn't we start it ahead of those numbers?
Click to expand...

If you use tournament seeding, we finished the season 28-32 range. And that's with half a season with Dinwiddie.

A lot of the advanced metrics guys had us in the 50 range.

I'm with Nik, without Spencer, we shouldn't touch the top 30 in the preseason poll. Finishing the year however is a completely different thing.
 
TimmyDUBs said:
While the young guys didn't show as much development as we would have liked by the end of the season, we are returning virtually 100% of our production outside of Dinwiddie, and adding some nice talent. Where would you say we ended the season rankings-wise, and why wouldn't we start it ahead of those numbers?
Click to expand...

I'd put the Buffs somewhere around #45 at the end of the season.
 
Buffnik said:
I agree. Unless you're looking at things through the lens of being a Buffs fan, there's no reason to pick a Spencer-free squad in the Top 30. A national writer with no bias should put the Buffs in the 35-50 range (depending on how highly he rates Collier).
Click to expand...
Yup. The weak point is our guards. Our starting frontcourt has proven itself as well above average (Scott/XJ/Healthy Wes) with the chance to be dominant. There is some depth with the potential to be good (thomas + a certain incoming monster wide body which is going to get Nik all excited to talk about man ass). That's a top 25 position to be in right there.

The returning guards have, at this time, been found wanting, except for Ski. See: Pitt. All have significant weaknesses in their game, from the starters to the depth. To be a top 35 team, these guys would have to take a large step forward as a group. This isn't just about Fletch finding his shot/offense or Talton fixing his turnover problem... it's about finding a consistent game changer from this group that can take the pressure off of Ski, defend, and actually make things happen for our front court.

Ski is a damn good talent, but our guards are so limited right now that teams can basically key in on him and Scott and then dare the rest of the team to score. If XJ is having an on night, that's dangerous for them, but it is a roll of the dice most teams are going to be happy to make.

Without Dinwiddie, that's not a top 50 guard group iyam. He and Dom are the wildcards here. The Mayor makes it a top 15 guard group (he good). Dom is an unknown until proven otherwise. Pitt attacked our guards and wouldn't let Scott score. We know what happened. Until this Achilles heel is fixed, this team is going to really struggle to be better than .500.

All hail the mayor. Pray for the Dominance.
 
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TimmyDUBs said:
While the young guys didn't show as much development as we would have liked by the end of the season, we are returning virtually 100% of our production outside of Dinwiddie, and adding some nice talent. Where would you say we ended the season rankings-wise, and why wouldn't we start it ahead of those numbers?
Click to expand...
Spencer scored 14.7 points per game when he was in the lineup. After he went down, our scoring decreased by 13.7 ppg. There was no replacement. The team stepped up to replace 1 ppg from what he left behind. The freshmen need to make some gargantuan leaps forward this offseason that they didn't take in the second half of this year if Spencer does leave. Don't forget, in the eyes of the national pundits, we were trending significantly down as the season closed out, not up. Based on that, why would we start ahead of where we ended rankings-wise?
 
BuffaloSoldier76 said:
Spencer scored 14.7 points per game when he was in the lineup. After he went down, our scoring decreased by 13.7 ppg. There was no replacement. The team stepped up to replace 1 ppg from what he left behind. The freshmen need to make some gargantuan leaps forward this offseason that they didn't take in the second half of this year if Spencer does leave. Don't forget, in the eyes of the national pundits, we were trending significantly down as the season closed out, not up. Based on that, why would we start ahead of where we ended rankings-wise?
Click to expand...

You didn't even bother adjusting for opponent or opponent pace. Useless comparison.
 
Nor Cal Buff said:
You didn't even bother adjusting for opponent or opponent pace. Useless comparison.
Click to expand...

My impression is that CU's pace slowed tremendously after Spencer went down. Not sure if accurate, but it sure seemed to be the case.
 
Buffnik said:
My impression is that CU's pace slowed tremendously after Spencer went down. Not sure if accurate, but it sure seemed to be the case.
Click to expand...

According to KenPom's "# of Possessions" in the game numbers, it breaks down as:

With Spencer: 69.25 possessions
UDub Game (I didn't count in either group): 66 possessions
Without Spencer: 66.4 possessions

Some of that you could say comes down to "crunch time" as play does tend to slow in conference and in tourneys (we averaged a glacial 59 possessions in our three tourney games), but it's safe to say your eyes aren't lying.
 
Goose said:
According to KenPom's "# of Possessions" in the game numbers, it breaks down as:

With Spencer: 69.25 possessions
UDub Game (I didn't count in either group): 66 possessions
Without Spencer: 66.4 possessions

Some of that you could say comes down to "crunch time" as play does tend to slow in conference and in tourneys (we averaged a glacial 59 possessions in our three tourney games), but it's safe to say your eyes aren't lying.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Goose. YMSSRA.

So if Spencer was giving us about 15 ppg and our scoring went down about 14 ppg...

And our pace would suggest that scoring should have only gone down about 3 ppg...

Then the sad truth is that the offense suffered a monumental setback without Spencer. Basically, that at the post-Spencer pace we were coming up a double-digit scorer short every night of where the team would have been. There wasn't a "scoring by committee" make up for the loss. It was pretty much just a straight loss in offensive firepower and production.

How the hell did Tad get this squad to play about .500 ball in the Pac-12 at the end of the year?

(And the more frustrating/depressing question: was this team on the cusp of elite if injuries hadn't hit?)
 
Buffnik said:
Thanks, Goose. YMSSRA.

So if Spencer was giving us about 15 ppg and our scoring went down about 14 ppg...

And our pace would suggest that scoring should have only gone down about 3 ppg...

Then the sad truth is that the offense suffered a monumental setback without Spencer. Basically, that at the post-Spencer pace we were coming up a double-digit scorer short every night of where the team would have been. There wasn't a "scoring by committee" make up for the loss. It was pretty much just a straight loss in offensive firepower and production.

How the hell did Tad get this squad to play about .500 ball in the Pac-12 at the end of the year?

(And the more frustrating/depressing question: was this team on the cusp of elite if injuries hadn't hit?)
Click to expand...
Well, yea, rankings wise, we were. Although all the advanced metrics hate tadball. Except for the late game ones.
 
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