Is over .500 enough to consider the trajectory of this team promising?

MAC CHAMPIONSHIP JUST WATCH..

We're already teetering on failing with #1.

I'm more or less with OU_Country on this one. I think it's going to be an up and down year, with the ups showing us the potential of the group and the downs reminding us we're too young right now. We'll probably win a few games we shouldn't win, and lose some games we shouldn't lose.

Making it to Cleveland.

That's a good one. I expect some early season struggles will mean Ohio will not be in the top eight and won't have a first-round tournament home game but by the end of the year, the Bobcats hopefully are better and capable of beating someone who was a little better on the road.

I certainly don't need to see a .500 record for the season to be successful to me.

More than anything, I want to feel like the young players on the team get better and have a bright future. It would be nice if one of the young guys (maybe Preston or BVP) earns All-MAC honors, even if it's honorable mention. It'd be nice if there's a couple All-MAC freshman team honorees. I want to see a team that gets along and competes, is inspired to play hard by the coach and wants to get better.

After tonight it's post season play!

For me:
Over .500
Competitive in all games or most
Continual improvement through the season.
Be the team no one wants to play come tourny time.

Might sound odd...but what is the point differential in our losses? Are we competitive losing games between 1-9 points and not the several 13-20 point clunker losses we've had to endure over the last five years.

The student interest point is a good one. Whether or not it is successful remains to be seen, but the efforts to get Boals and Bolden more visible publicly and on social media are definitely noticeable.

I share in your optimism, but in the back of my mind I still remember situations with Campbell, Carter, and Dartis from recent history.

I'll take that a step further and say re-ignite the energy in the Convo, period. The last few times I was in the Convo before moving to Texas, while the games were competitive it felt like half of those in attendance were asleep.

So, on this front, the injury component is putting our season in jeopardy. I'm not sure if there has been much change in fan support at the Convo, but it's a very small sample size thus far in that category. Instead, I looked at some of the advanced stats that were mentioned as a measure to see if we are playing differently. Here's what we have done so far compared to how we ended last season.


Our offensive rating is 108.7, which has us in the top 100. Last year, we were 97.6, near the very bottom of the country.

Our defensive rating is 96.1, middle of the pack nationally. Last year, we were 102.9, near the bottom of the country.

Turnover percentage is pretty comparable to last year (17.3% now, 17.5% last year).

Effective Field Goal % is .554, which is 35th in the nation. Last year, we were far worse at .488.

Effective Field Goal % Allowed is .459 this year, top 100 in the nation. Last year, it was .506.

Our big growth comes in 3 Pt FG%, which is .373 (50th nationally) compared to .295 last year, and

Assist Per Game, which is 16.6 (25th nationally), and was 14.5 last year (still good for top 100 nationally).

Assist/TO is 1.24 this year (49th nationally), and last year we were an even 1.00.

We're not even through the non-con portion of the schedule and I'm on the verge of saying it already has been a success. There's life in the program.