CentFLBilliken Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 1. Marquette (#21) 2. Louisville (#23) 3. Memphis (#29) 4. Cincinnati (#35) 5. UAB 6. Charlotte 7. DePaul 8. SLU 9. Southern Mississippi 10. ECU 11. USF 12. TCU 13. Houston 14. Tulane Missouri #3 Illinois #13 Xavier #24 Dayton #40 Anyone else going to confuse Houston's Ray McCallum and USF's Robert McCullum? Is it possible that they are in fact the same person? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu72 Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Does anyone agree that DePaul and Charlotte will finish ahead of us? What did DePaul do in the offseason-good JUCO's? Didn't Charlotte lose a key guy or two? I can see UAB and the rest but don't see us this far behind. Also, don't see Marquette in #1. I'd opt for UC to return to the top. I know one thing, I'll have us beating Marquette in my preseason picks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcglotherirvin Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 this is a bunch of crap in my mind. so many of these preseason reports are just based on the hype of last year's tourney. i think cincy will be the team to beat once again, followed by louisville and then either marquette or charlotte. i think charlotte could be the nation's surprise team this year. they have a lot of talent and are very well-coached. i just don't see marquette being anything like they were last year. who will replace the inside scoring and the point production of jackson and wade. i just don't think they will have it this year. in fact, i am predicting that the bills beat marquette at least once this year. i'm not predicting the same against cincy or charlotte. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Law Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 DuhPaul had an impressive recruiting class (5 top 100 guys) but then again, they're still DuhPaul. Charlotte had a good class as well and Lutz took time off from filming for Seabiscuit to run off Butter Johnson and a few other gutless wonders who quit on him during the UAB game in the CUSA tourney. 1 name to watch out for - Martin Iti. Top 10 player, huge get for Charlotte. They'll be solid as usual. Sorry, SLU will NOT beat Marquette once again this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 i think only cincy is going to be head and shoulders better than everyone in the conference. after that, prob 2-8 is a toss up. i tend to favor uab more than i have seen in a lot of publications. they only lost that lead guard and they just looked awesome at tourney time. their team looked so much like the peak years of arkansas' "40 minutes of hell". i am betting williams is a coach. i suppose a lot of weight is being given to iti coming to charlotte thus their favor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiken Law Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 "who will replace the inside scoring and the point production of jackson and wade." JUCO stud PF Marcus Jackson and Scott Merritt for the first part of your question, Diener, Novak, Karon Bradley and freshmen Dameon Mason and Carlton Christian (a real steal on the recruiting front) for the second part of your question. This is a better "team" than last year. They will have a lot of balance on offense and will compete with Cincy and Louisville for the conference title. I see Sweet 16 potential in this MU team. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACE Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 SLU will beat Marquette at Savvis and we'll beat Charlotte here because we always do. If we played Louisville at home, we'd beat them again, because we also always beat them at home. It's games against crap teams like TCU on the road that I worry about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billiken_roy Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 while i am not naive enough to believe marquette has completely replaced wade and jackson, they return a pretty solid group highlighted by merritt and deiner and bring in a nice group as well with what sounds like clones of wade and jackson with marcus jackson, a juco power forward and dameon mason, a jumping jack wing from the chicago suburbs. marquette will be real good. charlotte might be gaining more from subtraction than by addition even though iti comes with high expectations. keep in mind as well that these magazines were printed before incoming charlotte forward, dedric spooner decided not to enroll in school. that will hurt them more than say morris not showing up at slu will hurt the billikens. it continues to surprise me that uab isnt getting more support. granted they lost their little rocket guard, finley i believe, but they bring in two new juco guards and have pretty much everyone else back that contributed last year. i actually like uab for at least a top 4 spot in the conference. louisville lost a lot imo. not sure if they have enough coming in to be considered a complete reload. gaines will be tough to replace alone. however that said, the garcia kid has just loads of talent and now gets to step out of gaines shadow. who knows. they recruit the supposed best point guard out of detroit high schools with the jenkins kid as well, so louisville will be good. it will be interesting to see how memphis performs this year. their big fish was going to be the perkins kid from texas who unexpectedly went to the nba without ever setting foot on the memphis floor. now their recruits are lead by sean banks who was arrested this summer for branding gang symbols on a girl in his neighborhood. always good to hear cal is going after top notch character. depaul does have quite the class, however, i believe all five of the players are high school players. in most cases, freshman in c-usa do not dominate play. supposedly, houston and tcu both have nice recruiting classes coming in. and i think houston was a lot better than they played last year. they could be the team that breaks up the hardest from expectations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3star_recruit Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Our boys finished 4th in the league last year while only averaging 60 ppg. I think we've got more offensive firepower this year and Brad's teams will always play good defense. We could surprise this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu72 Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 That's what I'm talking about, 3 star. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheA_Bomb Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 Lindy's is the worst publication with Athlon coming in next. Sporting News is probably the best. Athlon rankings in CUSA: 1. Cincy 2. Charlotte 3. UofL 4. Marq. 5. Memphis 6. UAB 7. SLU 8. DePaul 9. S.Miss. 10. UofH 11. TCU 12. ECU 13. Tulane 14. USF These rankings are probably more accurate. I would put SLU at #5 followed by UAB and Memphis then DePaul. Of course we have to defend the home court. We will put ourselves on the map early in the season with our upset of #1 ranked Zona'. A few more quality wins after that and we will be on the lips of the pundits and ride that wave into the tourney. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3star_recruit Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 I'd settle for an upset of Marquette on the road. We were so close to doing it last year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bills75 Posted September 22, 2003 Share Posted September 22, 2003 While it 'feels good' to be highly ranked by the 'experts', i'll bet on our coach & his ability to put our team in a position to win games that others say we'll lose. I'm OK with a mid-conference ranking at this point. We'll end up better than that in the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcglotherirvin Posted September 23, 2003 Share Posted September 23, 2003 "who will replace the inside scoring and the point production of jackson and wade." JUCO stud PF Marcus Jackson and Scott Merritt for the first part of your question, Diener, Novak, Karon Bradley and freshmen Dameon Mason and Carlton Christian (a real steal on the recruiting front) for the second part of your question. I'm not sure how to respond to your first answer. how will marcus jackson and scott merritt replace the inside scoring of robert jackson? scott merritt will merely replace the inside scoring of scott merrit. unless marcus jackson is ready to be a 2nd team all conference big man, there is no doubt that there will be a fall off from last year's inside game. the point production of wade will be replaced by 5 players, three of whom played significant roles last year. so i guess you are saying that scoring will not be a problem - it will just be more spread out. i can accept that, but its still going to be tough to replace the presence of duane wade. i think he's the best all-around player to come out of C-USA since larry hughes (i'd still rather have hughes). you marquette fans never cease to amaze me - in a post above you said something like slu will not beat marquette once again this year. let's not forget that prior to last season, slu and marquette were extremely comparable - and remember how good those games were last year. one exceptional tourney run and you guys all of a sudden think marquette is duke. i had a marquette friend of mine tell me recently that he thought xavier wouldn't add much to the proposed papal conference because they were a mid-major, unlike marquette. are you kidding me? xavier has been consistently better than marquette for the past 15 years, ever since the days of byron larkin and tyrone hill. get off your high horses. i almost wish mizzou hadn't had a moron for a coach - i could have coached them to a victory over marquette in the NCAA tourney last year. if that would have happened none of you guys would be saying a damn thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
former_d1 Posted September 23, 2003 Share Posted September 23, 2003 Just a few thoughts about the team: Louiv, cini, uab, and Marquette will be the only teams I would pencil in front of us right now. Uab with its version on 40 minutes of hell is going to win against a lot of teams. Memphis’ talent level does not scare me this year and DePaul’s coach has proved nothing to me. Therefore I feel the talent level in the rest of the league is about the same. Which leaves you with coaching, I feel Brad can out coach just about everyone (Charlotte coach is under rated) . It will be us and char for 5th in the league again. The reason I don’t think we will finish any lower is defense. Brad will have them playing defense. Talent on the team: guard play will be down without perry. The bigs can do no worse than last year on offense. The bigs on defense will not be as good as Kenny but we have plenty of fouls. Scoring should be up out of the 60’s, just a gut feeling. You will be able to press this team but we have smart kids and good coaching to pass our way through it. Perry will not be here to bail us out. Hopefully we have enough soft games to get the kinks worked out of our game. If not we may have some bad loses in us for the 1st of the year. All I can say is we better beat sms. I don’t view that school as anywhere near slu. But we have lost to them 3 or 4 times in the time I have followed slu. We should play and crush siu and sms every year. I sound like a tiger fan but that is the way I see it. My wife was an all American at sms and she is quick to point out slu has much more to work with. Losing to them just can’t happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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