Norm Peterson

When the Shim Shams touch themselves, it's to make sure there's still a pulse.

How about this one?

You mean … Is no longer The Commissioner?

Georgi's a soph-to-be and was born on 11/16/98; our guy Yvan is a frosh-to-be and was born on 3/22/02. Georgi is 2 1/2 years older for his year in school than Yvan. I have to assume if Georgi has a good sophomore year, he's going to declare for the draft, no? If he has any NBA aspirations, he's already getting kind of long in the tooth.

Their loss is our gain. Might not have been fair for the Bulls to dump Hoiberg, but it sure worked out for us. ?

From the sounds of things, including what Isaiah said recently (don't remember where I saw it but he was being interviewed about the draft) and basically sounds like Isaiah was planning on leaving regardless. Same with Thomas Allen. And I don't think Nana intended to stick around (not sure Miles would have kept him.) So, how does it look if we take those 3 out of there? That's what I was worried about heading into this coming season. I felt Miles really needed to do well this past season and make the tourney and win the game we've always wanted, because he was going to need to fill some spots and that would have been tough sledding without at least reaching the tourney. I don't have a lot of confidence that, with the way the season ended, Miles would have had much recruiting success filling those spots and I felt he was no more than a year away from being let go regardless. So, I think the team that would have taken the floor for Miles in the fall would look a lot like the above without Zay, Nana or TA. And that's not a team that's likely going to win too many games for you. Truthfully, I think there's a chance we would have lost Jervay Green had Miles been retained. There were rumors of KU being interested before Miles was let go. I'm just relieved that the dust has settled and, in the process of it settling, we (the athletic dept) managed to land a proven coach who was immediately able to fill the roster with some pretty solid players. I shudder to think what things would have looked like if we'd either kept Miles or replaced him with some other unproven (at this level) mid-major coach.

So, the Hornets measured Roby at 6-3 and 194#, huh? ? They might want to get back out the tape measure. Just sayin.

Wouldn't that be nice?

I get it. ?

You're probably about on it. 17.5. I'm thinking I could see us winning 9 games in conference and finishing around 8th or 9th. I reckon we ought to win about that many non-conference games as well, since the non-con schedule is lining up pretty gentle this year, it seems.

Hey, we should check and see if Boehm can book them for a halftime show at PBA this season. Since the Shim Shams have lost some members (may they rest in peace.)

I'll still take the overs.

We have some really effing good players we've brought in. Well, I didn't really have much to do with it, so not much me as part of the "we" but ... you get the idea. Yeah. Top half. Could happen. If you've been keeping up with our recruiting -- and maybe you have and maybe you haven't -- we have some players. Mack, the PG, has game changing speed and quickness. Drops dimes like you'd be amazed. We have a lot of players who can make some pretty impressive passes, actually. We have shooters with range, we have guys who can drive the ball and get to the rim (and a lot of those are the same guy who can do both things) and we have depth in those spots. You want a particular skillset? You can probably look at our roster and find it. Except 7 footers who can shoot hook shots with either hand. Don't have any of those. But, other than that ...

Omoruyi transferring is just a dagger for Rutgers. Yeah, Geo is a decent player but he's only one guy. Omoruyi was a player. Wait, any chance he could ... graduate by August? Just, y'know, askin. So, what's our floor and our ceiling? If everything pans out and all the players are what we think/hope they could be, we should be top half, right? Like maybe 6th best in conference? 7th? But if it takes guys awhile to gel and figure out how to play together and some of the pieces aren't quite as good as we thought/hoped, it could be pretty tough, like even Minnesota bad. Granted, it's Hoiberg's first season, but this roster is pretty set. We don't have a lot of room to add players for the '20 class. So, whatever we are this year, it might not be a whole lot different next year. Which means if you think we have some pretty good talent, I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to pick us to do fairly well in Hoiberg's inaugural campaign.

I think it's in the NCAA's hands at this point. Fingers crossed.

Though it might not seem like it at first glance, you and I pretty much agree as you did what I said and started Mack, took 2 of Green/Burke/Cheatham, one of Kavas/Stevenson, and one of Cross/Ouedraogo. But I CANNOT BELIEVE you took Piatkowski over Easley! What are you thinking, man?! You must have been going by name on the back of the jersey. (Everyone knows the BIG fight is which walk-on enters the game first. ?)

By the way, I think this is really interesting stuff and good comparisons and I would have been totally OK with you putting them into my thread on meeting this year's Huskers. I didn't intend that thread to be just for my opinions only.

I was struck by your comment, "Not super explosive, but certainly athletic enough to get by defenders and finish at the rim with either hand." That sounded very JPJ to me.

I'm going to try to throw out some wild-ass guesses at percentage likelihood of starting for various players like @aphilso1, though I will readily admit I'm probably way off and it'll probably be a completely different picture when all is said and done. 1. I'd give Mack 90% chance of starting. There's always the possibility that he gets in here and just doesn't pick up the offense and his juco shooting was a lot of smoke and mirrors. That could happen. Probably won't, but I'm allowing for a small chance that it does. 2. (tie) Green, Burke, Cheatham, I'd all rate at 65% chance. I think two of these guys are probably going to join Mack in back. Which two is anyone's guess. Jucos always seem to need time to adjust; Burke hasn't played in a year; Cheatham was injured. On paper, though, it could be any or all. Cheatham is the only one who's played at this level; by reputation, Burke was hard to guard in practice last year; but Jervay!, need I say more? 5. (tie) Stevenson, Kavas, I'd rate at 50% chance each. One of these guys stands a pretty good chance of starting. I'd say there's a 90% chance we'll see one or the other in the starting lineup. And maybe a 5% chance they both start (and 5% times two players is 10% total, so ... I think I did the math right, there.) 7. (tie) Ouedraogo and Cross at 45% each. Not sure which one of them is better. Good chance we'll see one or the other. There's also a good chance, since they're both freshmen, that we won't see either. Who really knows at this point? We haven't seen enough of them. But just going by the experience of what freshmen are usually like ... 9. Curtis. I'd give him a 20% chance of starting. He can do some things but there's a lot of talent ahead of him on the depth chart and he's only a freshman. 10. Thor. To be nice, I'll give Thor 3% because he's such a heads-up player who gives you everything he has when he's on the floor. 11. Arop. 2%. Young. Perhaps a bit raw. Not saying he can't or won't make the rotation and earn some playing time, but the chances he'll start are pretty miniscule. Having said all of this, I really have no idea. I'm probably way off. It's fun thinking about it this year because, jeez, we just really have no idea, it's so up in the air. Last year, you kinda figured you knew exactly who the starters would be and you were probably right. This year, it's really anyone's guess. So, let's make some guesses! Those are mine.

@aphilso1 I think you can borrow some of the percentages you assigned to Akol and Thor and divvy them up among players further up the list. I agree with @khoock that there's basically not any chance of them starting. And I would further say there's less than a 1 in 5 chance that Curtis jumps over 4 other players and moves into the starting lineup, so you can probably adjust that downward too. In my opinion, anyway. Finally, I think there's better than a 3 in 10 chance that Burke starts. Just some suggestions. You don't have to take them.

Well, we didn't get the best case scenario; we got the "no Roby, no Jayce Johnson" scenario. I bring this up now because there's still time for you to reconsider your prediction. If you told me no Roby, no Johnson, and 15 wins is the over/under, I'll take the overs. For sure.

If you had to guess and rank the guards from quickest/fastest to not as quick/fast as the other guys, how do you think you'd score it? My guess starts with Mack, then goes to Burke. Next is probably Cheatham and then Jervay and finally Curtis. If you count Stevenson as a guard, he's probably next, and then Kavas. And Kavas ain't slow. Watch his film. He has pretty good straight-line speed. I don't know about his lateral quicks and change of direction, but he ain't slow. Whereas Cross is like a souped up Jeriah Horne, I'd say Matty Kavas is like a souped up Jack McVeigh.

Yeah. This. He's one of the knownest of the unknowns. We know he's a career roughly 36.7% from three, which is solid. I'm not sure how well he penetrates compared to guys like Dachon and Cam Mack, but I know he has the ball skills to get to the lane. (He has to be getting shots somehow/somewhere when treys are only like a fourth of the shots he takes.) I'd say it's entirely possible Haanif starts. I could see it being Mack, Green, Cheatham, Stevenson, Kavas. That's 4 guys who can scorch the nets and another who blows by defenders and delivers them the ball.

What about his NU doppelgänger, James Palmer Jr?

That's a pretty good comparison.