College basketball will kick off tomorrow night with Midnight Madness at many schools - practice will most assuredly begin for all programs on Saturday.
Tubby has a bunch of "kittens" ready to debut in Lexington (4 highly touted freshmen and a redshirt junior transfer ready to make his debut after sitting out last season).
I won't be sold on the Terps until I see them in action. I think that they will be able to build on the ACC title last year and maybe push to the Final Four with the breaks.
Our non-conference schedule is intersting; neutral site against Memphis, at Wisconsin, George Mason, and Temple. In conferene, we only play Virginia, Wake and Carolina once. So the schedule breaks for us too...
no midnight madness here. Stallings taking the business like approach as usual. I really want to see our freshmen play though...
Vandy will be fine this year. We have a good mix of veterans and eager youth. Przybysewski (Sheb-a-CHEF-ski) and Mario will share the scoring burden that the loss of Freije left us. Starting lineup...
PG Mario Moore JR SG Jason Holwerda SR SF Corey Smith SR PF Dawid Przybysewski SR C Julian Terrell JR
I'm predicting a return to the tournament this year although I think we finish 4th in the SEC east (6th overall)
Oh and Rusty...those other damn Wildcats out in Tucson stole J.P. Prince away from us. We just had to be competing with PG University for a top PG.
I saw that Prince has verballed to Arizona. Don't give up hope, Joe Crawford had verballed to Michigan before changing his mind, reopening his recruitment and signing with UK.
And, FWIW, most gurus are saying that the '05 class is weaker than the '06 class. If you can hold off without a PG next year you might find a better quality in '06.
If Providence is ever going to make a run at the top again, this is the last chance before the tough Conference USA teams join the Big East. Gomes is back, and he should be First Team All-America and a Player of the Year candidate. If McGrath can keep his underaged self out of the bars and not slap around his girlfriend again, he should do okay. If they get through the first 2 rounds of the pre-season NIT, Providence could have an extremely difficult early schedule, with Wake lined up for the NIT semis the night before Thanksgiving, the NIT Finals/Consolation the night after Thanksgiving, and then Florida in Miami the next night. Could be a great 3 days that puts Providence in the top 5, or could kill them. Should fight Syracuse and UCONN for a top 3 spot in the Big East, and hopefully Gomes puts the team on his back before he rides off into the sunset and we drop into the abyss.
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