24-25 Hoya Basketball

[TC]

Oct 30, 2024 18:04:12 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Oct 30, 2024 15:04:33 GMT -5 EtomicB said:

I agree that this season shouldn't be judged on wins & losses.

Hard stop.

If this team (and by extension, the program) is not judged on wins and losses, what then, exactly? Player surveys? Reps in the weight room? Instagram followers? This isn't the Georgetown field hockey team, which is so underfunded it must play its home games 44 miles from campus because the school can't find a suitable place for hosting seven home games a year. Nor is it Coppin State basketball, whose annual budget of $713,728 is about two weeks of what men's basketball at Georgetown spends, and which must play 11 of its first 12 games on the road to pay the bills. Georgetown University had the largest men's basketball budget in Division I in 2022-23, the most recent season disclosed. More than Kentucky, more than Duke.

Yes, it matters.

I don't recall Dan Hurley saying that wins and losses don't matter, nor Rick Pitino or even Chris Holtmann. A year ago, wasn't it Ed Cooley who said "We're going to win here. We're going to win a lot"? That's why Ed Cooley is in the corner office and not Patrick Ewing. Ignoring wins and losses yet again sends a message to players, recruits, donors, and fans at-large that 2024-25 is potentially another write off for a brand that has fallen further than any in major college basketball over the last decade.

No one is ignoring wins and losses. But I'm not judging Ed Cooley off of the structural mistakes that John Thompson and past administrations (Healy, O'Donovan, etc) made around an arena and real estate or the Patrick Ewing extension that Jack DeGioia gave that truly was a statement that results did not matter and that only insider status did. Today's budget was mortgaged a long time ago.

If your metric is wins per dollar, no coach you could hire would meet the bar for success for the next decade. Those financial mistakes have been made and Ed Cooley's job is to get this program back into competitive shape, not unwind athletic department inequities with women's field hockey.

[hoyasaxa2003]

Oct 30, 2024 18:04:12 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Georgetown University had the largest men's basketball budget in Division I in 2022-23, the most recent season disclosed. More than Kentucky, more than Duke.

What is your source for this information? I am seeing 2023 lists that put us at 20th place. The list I see puts Kentucky's budget at $17 million, I find it hard to believe ours is higher than that--and if it is, it's likely only because we are paying two coaches at the same time because of DeGioia's stupid extension of Ewing.

We may be the biggest budget in the Big East (though the list I saw puts Villanova actually significant higher than our budget). But all of Division I? I find that really hard to believe, but happy to admit I am wrong if so.

[DFW HOYA]

Oct 31, 2024 10:38:26 GMT -5 hoyasaxa2003 said:

What is your source for this information? I am seeing 2023 lists that put us at 20th place. The list I see puts Kentucky's budget at $17 million, I find it hard to believe ours is higher than that--and if it is, it's likely only because we are paying two coaches at the same time because of DeGioia's stupid extension of Ewing.

The total was from the Department of Education filings (aka the EADA report); yes, I think it's an anomaly with Ewing's buyout and the cost of three months of Cooley and his assistants in the total (Apr 1-Jun 30), plus any incidental transition expenses.

[hoyasaxa2003]

Oct 31, 2024 11:16:04 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

Oct 31, 2024 10:38:26 GMT -5 hoyasaxa2003 said:

What is your source for this information? I am seeing 2023 lists that put us at 20th place. The list I see puts Kentucky's budget at $17 million, I find it hard to believe ours is higher than that--and if it is, it's likely only because we are paying two coaches at the same time because of DeGioia's stupid extension of Ewing.

The total was from the Department of Education filings (aka the EADA report); yes, I think it's an anomaly with Ewing's buyout and the cost of three months of Cooley and his assistants in the total (Apr 1-Jun 30), plus any incidental transition expenses.

As I read this, total expenses are $17,277,041, and revenues are 16,412,916, which means that without the $4 million Ewing salary that DeGioia and whoever else approved Ewing's extension should be paying, our expenses would be about $13.3 million, with over $3 million in profits. It's good perspective and shows the program is in much better financial shape than people often think. I would still be extremely surprised if for 2023-2024 that this is the highest expenses in Division I, but even if so, it's highly artificial because of payments to Ewing.

[prhoya]

Oct 31, 2024 22:41:35 GMT -5 hoyasaxa2003 said:

Oct 31, 2024 11:16:04 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

The total was from the Department of Education filings (aka the EADA report); yes, I think it's an anomaly with Ewing's buyout and the cost of three months of Cooley and his assistants in the total (Apr 1-Jun 30), plus any incidental transition expenses.

As I read this, total expenses are $17,277,041, and revenues are 16,412,916, which means that without the $4 million Ewing salary that DeGioia and whoever else approved Ewing's extension should be paying, our expenses would be about $13.3 million, with over $3 million in profits. It's good perspective and shows the program is in much better financial shape than people often think. I would still be extremely surprised if for 2023-2024 that this is the highest expenses in Division I, but even if so, it's highly artificial because of payments to Ewing.

Pls include link for everyone.

[kghoya]

Is the argument here as to whether Georgetown has the largest basketball budget or just one of the largest basketball budgets? Either way, seems like trying to count wins and losses should be something that is happening.

[jackofjoy]

Nov 1, 2024 9:05:50 GMT -5 kghoya said:

Is the argument here as to whether Georgetown has the largest basketball budget or just one of the largest basketball budgets? Either way, seems like trying to count wins and losses should be something that is happening.

Exactly. Probably little question that dollars spent per win over the past 5 years has to be among the worst in DI

[FrazierFanatic]

I don't think that Etomic, or anyone else, was arguing that wins and losses don't matter at all. Of course they do. But we can't exaggerate the importance of, say, 8 or 9 conference wins vs. 6, or a 10-1 OOC record vs. 8-3. Building the program, AND the fan support, involves a variety of issues. Greater success in things like building a culture that players want to come to/stay at, with a style that attracts fans, public relations, etc. can be more important than a couple of extra wins when you are building from the basement up.

[hoyasaxa2003]

Nov 1, 2024 9:22:48 GMT -5 jackofjoy said:

Nov 1, 2024 9:05:50 GMT -5 kghoya said:

Is the argument here as to whether Georgetown has the largest basketball budget or just one of the largest basketball budgets? Either way, seems like trying to count wins and losses should be something that is happening.

Exactly. Probably little question that dollars spent per win over the past 5 years has to be among the worst in DI

Of course it is, we have only won 4 Big East games in the last three years. I am not going to bother checking other programs, but I think it's a safe bet that we are the leader on that metric (plus other than DePaul, many of the other bad high majors play in conferences with weaker bottoms, making it easier to get wins even if they are horrible overall).

We clearly have a top 25 budget, so yes, we spend a lot of money on basketball. That said, I think it's silly to focus on the $17 million number, when the only reason it is that high is because we paid Ewing $4 million last year, and will this year. To me, the $13 million number is more telling, plus it's also telling that without Ewing, we would be profitable, or at least close to even.

I am not sure everyone would agree, but I think purely in terms of evaluating the current situation, looking at what Ewing did is mostly irrelevant, other than showing the starting point for Cooley. Was our program a horrible investment during Ewing? Yes. That's why the extension of Ewing's contract was so negligent. But right now, that's a sunk cost and the past. More importantly, we need to focus on Cooley. His first year was horrible. What will he do his second year? Will we see improvement? Is he charting a plan for the future? In some ways, we won't know this fully until next March because regardless of how many wins we get (unless we get way more than expected), the real test is (a) how we do this year, and (b) whether we retain the good talent we need to continue to be good for next year.

[ColumbiaHeightsHoya]

Nov 1, 2024 10:02:09 GMT -5 hoyasaxa2003 said:

Nov 1, 2024 9:22:48 GMT -5 jackofjoy said:

Exactly. Probably little question that dollars spent per win over the past 5 years has to be among the worst in DI

Of course it is, we have only won 4 Big East games in the last three years. I am not going to bother checking other programs, but I think it's a safe bet that we are the leader on that metric (plus other than DePaul, many of the other bad high majors play in conferences with weaker bottoms, making it easier to get wins even if they are horrible overall).

We clearly have a top 25 budget, so yes, we spend a lot of money on basketball. That said, I think it's silly to focus on the $17 million number, when the only reason it is that high is because we paid Ewing $4 million last year, and will this year. To me, the $13 million number is more telling, plus it's also telling that without Ewing, we would be profitable, or at least close to even.

I am not sure everyone would agree, but I think purely in terms of evaluating the current situation, looking at what Ewing did is mostly irrelevant, other than showing the starting point for Cooley. Was our program a horrible investment during Ewing? Yes. That's why the extension of Ewing's contract was so negligent. But right now, that's a sunk cost and the past. More importantly, we need to focus on Cooley. His first year was horrible. What will he do his second year? Will we see improvement? Is he charting a plan for the future? In some ways, we won't know this fully until next March because regardless of how many wins we get (unless we get way more than expected), the real test is (a) how we do this year, and (b) whether we retain the good talent we need to continue to be good for next year.

Agree with most of this. There is also a lot of behind the scenes work that has to be cleaned up. There was a lot of institutional rot in the program and frankly I think that old school infrastructure had Ewing set-up to fail from day one. Cooley seems to be doing the work there to get us modernized. I'm expecting big things.

[CTHoya08]

Oct 30, 2024 18:55:11 GMT -5 SFHoya99 said:

Wins and losses should be a key measure every year. It also shouldn't be the only measure, and not even the only measure of performance.

We need to be on the right track, at a reasonable pace to have an expectation that it is likely the program can achieve where we want it to go. What that means for each of us is different, but I don't think setting specific wins and losses requirements as a sole measure is actually the best way to evaluate where we are on that path.

Just like I don't think ignoring it makes sense as well.

But if we don't hit a specific win target because the Big East is better than expected, and because we lost a number of close games with a young team, but the overall performance is much better and we have strong roster retention ... the latter two will be far more predictive than a reductive argument of "we only won X games."

JT3's first team missed the tournament when the young team ran out of steam down the stretch. That team had 2 future NBA players and a strong junior class to lead them. And yes, it was his first year, but there was a lot more in the cupboard when he arrived. It was clear to see that the team would be very good the next year despite the collapse, and it was.

So this is more like JTIII's first year for me. The freshman and sophomores are better than JTIII's initial class, I think, at least in volume if not in NBA upside, but with one senior and one junior, it's even younger. Players are going to hit walls; close games are going to be a challenge.

We need to show substantial progress. To have a year like last year instead of a year like 2004-05 puts us in a very bad place. Recruiting is momentum and we've got to show the upward climb visibly to recruits and to the guys we need to re-recruit every year in the current climate.

There's no point in putting an exact win number to it. But there is a number that is too low, as perception is a big part of reality.

This final sentence sums it up for me. It's kind of a frustrating "I know it when I see it" standard, but we need to see appreciable progress in actual W-L record this year, not only in the peripherals. The vast majority of people--even media, recruits, et al.--pay far less attention to this team than we do. We need to be able to point to an actual and material increase in wins. Being in a position to say "Yes, we were really bad again, but the defense turned a corner and four of our BE losses came down to the final two minutes" is not enough if the record doesn't improve by a lot. It reminds me (depressingly) of the old debate about "do we want to be ranked or is that somehow bad?" My view was always that yes, it's better, because it's a much more compelling narrative to be able to say, succinctly, that "we're ranked 18th" than to try to explain why we're good.

[hoyasaxa2003]

Nov 1, 2024 0:02:42 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Oct 31, 2024 22:41:35 GMT -5 hoyasaxa2003 said:

As I read this, total expenses are $17,277,041, and revenues are 16,412,916, which means that without the $4 million Ewing salary that DeGioia and whoever else approved Ewing's extension should be paying, our expenses would be about $13.3 million, with over $3 million in profits. It's good perspective and shows the program is in much better financial shape than people often think. I would still be extremely surprised if for 2023-2024 that this is the highest expenses in Division I, but even if so, it's highly artificial because of payments to Ewing.

Pls include link for everyone.

Sure, see below.

guhoyas.com/documents/2024/10/25/2023-24_EADA_Report.pdf

I would add that these EADA reports show that DFW's statement that we had the highest budget or expenses is incorrect. Louisville's basketball expenditure over the same time was $19,081,735, for example. Duke spent over $25 million. Kentucky was over $34 million. So are we a high budget? Yes. The highest? No way.

(Note: for some reason, the separate EADA stat website says our men's basketball expenses are $34 million, but that cannot possibly be right because the report itself says $17 million, and there is no way Georgetown has spent that amount of money on basketball.)

[SFHoya99]

Nov 1, 2024 9:05:50 GMT -5 kghoya said:

Is the argument here as to whether Georgetown has the largest basketball budget or just one of the largest basketball budgets? Either way, seems like trying to count wins and losses should be something that is happening.

The argument about money is just kind of pointless. For one, the single largest driver of the cost structure versus other teams is paying for whatever they are calling the MCI Center now. Most teams have on campus arenas they've either paid off, or don't attribute solely to a single team. Georgetown is stuck in a poor cost structure in that respect, and that's not on the coaching staff. The other big issue is we're still paying multiple coaches.

But that's not the issue with the discussion. Cooley is very well paid, in the top percent, and we should expect strong results or we should go get another coach that can get them.

The reason why the discussion is dumb is timeline. Despite people cherry picking certain individual coaches after the fact that had a really good year, the chances of even a very strong coach walking into the debacle at Georgetown and immediately raising us up is very, very low. Oh, there's some that would get lucky and a few who are just that damn good, but we really failed to identify those that were going to be damn good when we hired Ewing back when the job was even a little attractive. Picking coaches is not an exact science; everyone loved VCU Shaka Smart and everyone loves Marquette Shaka Smart, but Texas Shaka Smart had every advantage and was profoundly mediocre.

Progress will never be perfectly linear. A team won't win and lose perfectly along the path.

And it's simply not that freaking hard to look at the team and see if we are on the right track. I'm always amazed at people who have watched a sport for thirty years simply throw up their hands and go "welp, I can't tell anything going on, I gotta fall back 100% on results!" Most of us smart people; try using that noggin.

Cooley has a great freshman class and seems to be building stronger local ties.
Cooley had a good transfer class if not great.

Now we see four other key things:

Can Cooley motivate the team, which he never really seemed to have an issue with until last year?
Can Cooley create an effective tactical plan?
Can Cooley develop players?
Can Cooley retain players?

These are all things he's done pretty well in 10+ years of coaching, but do remain to be seen if he's up to it at Georgetown (the only thing the school really affects to me is retention and motivation -- the former simply because the depths we are at perhaps required taking some character risks, though this team doesn't look it).

You can be positive, you can be negative on the above.

But like ... it's not that hard to evaluate those drivers of success in their actuality rather than being like "Well, we only got 7 BE wins this year, so he sucks!"

[SFHoya99]

Nov 1, 2024 10:17:22 GMT -5 CTHoya08 said:

This final sentence sums it up for me. It's kind of a frustrating "I know it when I see it" standard, but we need to see appreciable progress in actual W-L record this year, not only in the peripherals. The vast majority of people--even media, recruits, et al.--pay far less attention to this team than we do. We need to be able to point to an actual and material increase in wins. Being in a position to say "Yes, we were really bad again, but the defense turned a corner and four of our BE losses came down to the final two minutes" is not enough if the record doesn't improve by a lot. It reminds me (depressingly) of the old debate about "do we want to be ranked or is that somehow bad?" My view was always that yes, it's better, because it's a much more compelling narrative to be able to say, succinctly, that "we're ranked 18th" than to try to explain why we're good.

I think the thing for me is process versus results. Good results can come from luck or variation and the same is true of bad results. It's not always indicative of future results -- Ewing's BE title comes to mind.

Good process yields good results over time.

We can't always evaluate every element of good process or causes from outside the program and that can be frustrating. But if I divide up what a coach does, we can evaluate some elements pretty well:

• Player evaluation - This takes years to see in some cases, unfortunately. But picking the right players is vital. I think JTIII's biggest mistake was probably passing on Josh Hart.
• Player recruiting - Much easier to evaluate in the moment. Did we get who we were clearly gunning for? I think this second year was a strong showing.
• Player motivation - Does the team try hard in both visible effort, in attempting to execute the plan, and in improving their skills? Sometimes very tough to tell what is the coach and the player so it needs time.
• Tactics / in game coaching - There's always some element of player execution and some element of fit, but by and large we can tell where people are on this pretty quick. I've seen Cooley a long time, and his teams tend to be pretty strong offensively and execute well. His defense is a choice, rarely elite, but smart ... but it clearly was not a fit at all for last year's team and he didn't adjust.
• Player development - historically a huge plus of Cooley's. Obviously needs years to evaluate.
• Player retention - always a bit tough to evaluate who we wanted to keep and why people left, and probably needs a multiple year sample ... but still pretty clear once we have issues (See Ewing).

There's process elements deeper than that, of course, that drive these, that we can't see. But we don't need to JUST look at results. We had crappy results last year but had a Top 15 recruiting class and a Top 25 transfer class; the two wins don't mean we didn't execute that.

Where longer term results come in is evaluating your process. If you never get results, then what you thought was good process is simply not. But sample sizes and challenges matter.

[SFHoya99]

Key questions and thoughts for the defense this year:

1. Is Sorber a capable rim protector? Whispers seem to be that he is very active and showing more defense than I think I expected, but obviously scrimmages and practices aren't always called with the same whistle. This is probably the single biggest thing for the team: depth at the rim.
2. Can Burks rebound well enough to (a) allow Sorber to contest and (b) justify his lack of offense on the other end? Burks seems to have the momentary inside track on the 4 spot and it seems it's defensive/rebounding driven. That makes sense -- Cook simply couldn't board and contest by himself last year and it let to a lose-lose choice.
3. Can Sorber or Fielder play the four defensively? Both are much more offensively dynamic than Burks and both are taller. There continues to be comments that once Julius' is healthy and conditioned (i.e. second semester) that he's very good (at least offensively) and could start at center. His injury may be why Fielder is playing second team right now (since we need a backup center) ... or it could be that Fielder still struggles to guard the perimeter. If one of Sorber or Fielder can be as effective as Burks defensively ... the offense suddenly becomes much more dynamic.
4. We're still likely to get killed by stretch fives. Two freshman and a guy who couldn't do it last year ... but the sheer depth and height difference at center is massive.
5. How good is Peavy and how much can we move him around? Ideally, you'd toss Micah at the opposition's best wing, at least in crunch time. But with two small guards, we may not be able to live with the other matchups. How tough they can be against bigger guys, how much of a pest, may allow us to basically throw Micah at anyone we want to shut down. In the college game, that's absurdly valuable. I'll be honest, I don't expect this to happen.
6. With a bunch of new players and freshmen ... will we learn the rotations? Peavy will improve perimeter D at his spot, but the rest is largely going to come down to focus on being in the right spot. Cooley couldn't teach last year's team in time. How much of that was the players and how much was the size of the task and Cooley's capability?

Same for the offense:

1. Back in the JTIII years, when we had good offenses, it became apparent that the next step was always offensive diversity -- do you have many ways to score in case something gets shut down? And moreso, shutting down one thing (via double teams, etc) usually opens up another. Defense is trade-offs; it's only in massive mismatches that you can shut everything down. I've always bucketed them into these groups: dribble drive / pick n roll type action; outside shooting; post play; motion/set plays (blurs a bit with pnr); offensive rebounding; fast breaks/defense to offense. Some of these interplay with each other, of course, but the ideal offense is good at all this. Last year's team could offensive rebound and would shoot well in a few games. We had some play-driven buckets but not many. Epps was our only penetrator.
2. As long as Mack and Epps stay healthy, this team is stronger at dribble drive plays and I'm much more excited about all of these bigs at the pnr/pnp than Cook. Offensively, this is a huge upgrade and I think we will be a legitimate plus in this area.
3. The rest are question marks. Our size should give us decent offensive rebounding, but Cook and Styles were a good combo last year; I'm wait and see before I think we get that again. Word is we are pushing fastbreaks in practice, which seems a bit of a scary omen given how bad we were at this last year, and how that can be flipped to "we aren't scoring in half court so we need to run." I do think we have faster hands on d this year. Post play? Maybe with Julius? I think our high post play could be very good, but I'm not sure any of these young guys are going to be great at the actual post up conversion -- though passing out of is will be very good. Motion / set plays? We ran a lot of good ones last year but also seemed to only run them once in a while. Big question mark until I see consistent execution given the newness and youth.
4. Oh, and the shooting. The outside shooting is not going to be good. Epps will be streaky and Mack was passable last year. The bigs may be surprisingly accurate with wide open shots, but they won't be shooting contested shots. Despite our weaknesses last year, Styles and Brumbaugh were high % guys and Heath could be like Epps game to game. In contrast, there's not a lot of positive history for Peavy, the freshmen or Curtis Williams. Burks is a low volume guy at best. It's going to be a weakness in games where Epps is not hot, period. There's no getting around that.
5. The key will be this: Can Mack + Epps + bigs who can hit open shots keep the defense honest enough that they can't collapse on a driving Epps and Mack or any of our bigs. Because if we can't punish them at all for packing it in ever -- or there's no hint of it -- then even our strengths are going to be incredibly blunted.
6. There's a world where this offense is better than last years. Fielder, Sorber and Halaifonua play to their skillset and not their youth. All three are effective passing and scoring. We saw flashes with Fielder, we've seen Sorber's fantastic passing and smart play, and the pick n roll / pick n pop work that Halaifonua has shown is pretty awesome. Honestly, that could be pretty devastating at the college level. Mack and Epps doubles our ballhandling and dribble effectiveness. The players pick up more of the offensive plays than they did last year, creating more buckets. Moving from guys like Heath and Ish improves decision making on the break. And Epps and others improve just enough in outside shooting that we can keep teams honest.
7. It's just soooo many ifs. The three young bigs aren't overly muscled. We stay healthy. The young team picks up the offense quickly. Epps' shooting really is improved by decision making or improvement.

The result? If we're going to see improvement this year, I think we're going to see something of a flip. We're going to go from a team who can't stop anyone and just hopes that we can three ball our way to contention to a team that mucks it up, defends, muscles guys, and basically tries to have Epps and Mack carry a mediocre offense. I'd love it if the bigs come up ... big ... and solve that last point, but that's a tough ask for freshmen.

I think we're better, because I do see real improvement on the D, and I don't think the offense slides so much as to offset it. But that youth ... it comes with a lot.

[jwp91]

Nov 1, 2024 10:17:22 GMT -5 CTHoya08 said:

Oct 30, 2024 18:55:11 GMT -5 SFHoya99 said:

Wins and losses should be a key measure every year. It also shouldn't be the only measure, and not even the only measure of performance.

We need to be on the right track, at a reasonable pace to have an expectation that it is likely the program can achieve where we want it to go. What that means for each of us is different, but I don't think setting specific wins and losses requirements as a sole measure is actually the best way to evaluate where we are on that path.

Just like I don't think ignoring it makes sense as well.

But if we don't hit a specific win target because the Big East is better than expected, and because we lost a number of close games with a young team, but the overall performance is much better and we have strong roster retention ... the latter two will be far more predictive than a reductive argument of "we only won X games."

JT3's first team missed the tournament when the young team ran out of steam down the stretch. That team had 2 future NBA players and a strong junior class to lead them. And yes, it was his first year, but there was a lot more in the cupboard when he arrived. It was clear to see that the team would be very good the next year despite the collapse, and it was.

So this is more like JTIII's first year for me. The freshman and sophomores are better than JTIII's initial class, I think, at least in volume if not in NBA upside, but with one senior and one junior, it's even younger. Players are going to hit walls; close games are going to be a challenge.

We need to show substantial progress. To have a year like last year instead of a year like 2004-05 puts us in a very bad place. Recruiting is momentum and we've got to show the upward climb visibly to recruits and to the guys we need to re-recruit every year in the current climate.

There's no point in putting an exact win number to it. But there is a number that is too low, as perception is a big part of reality.

This final sentence sums it up for me. It's kind of a frustrating "I know it when I see it" standard, but we need to see appreciable progress in actual W-L record this year, not only in the peripherals. The vast majority of people--even media, recruits, et al.--pay far less attention to this team than we do. We need to be able to point to an actual and material increase in wins. Being in a position to say "Yes, we were really bad again, but the defense turned a corner and four of our BE losses came down to the final two minutes" is not enough if the record doesn't improve by a lot. It reminds me (depressingly) of the old debate about "do we want to be ranked or is that somehow bad?" My view was always that yes, it's better, because it's a much more compelling narrative to be able to say, succinctly, that "we're ranked 18th" than to try to explain why we're good.

Regarding I will know it when I see it...

There are several players on our team good enough to reasonably want to play in the tournament and in meaningful games. If our play this season is such that players like Mack, Epps, Thomas, and Julius don't want to stick around for the next year, then it wasn't enough wins. If they believe they can fulfill their goals as a Hoya in 2025-2026, then whatever the win total was, it was enough. That is my version of I will know it when I see it.

Building for the future only works if the difference-making players are retained.

[SSHoya]

Without Kenner, almost no one has seen the current iteration of the Hoyas in person.

I will be at the season opener at McDonough Arena v. Lehigh and hope to see a coherent defense and improved athleticism.

[jwp91]

Nov 1, 2024 12:56:03 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Without Kenner, almost no one has seen the current iteration of the Hoyas in person.

I will be at the season opener at McDonough Arena v. Lehigh and hope to see a coherent defense and improved athleticism.

Enjoy the game. Recommend NOT playing a drinking game with a drink required for each missed outside shot. ;-)

[SSHoya]

Nov 1, 2024 13:08:39 GMT -5 jwp91 said:

Nov 1, 2024 12:56:03 GMT -5 SSHoya said:

Without Kenner, almost no one has seen the current iteration of the Hoyas in person.

I will be at the season opener at McDonough Arena v. Lehigh and hope to see a coherent defense and improved athleticism.

Enjoy the game. Recommend NOT playing a drinking game with a drink required for each missed outside shot. ;-)

And no Kenner dogs! At my age, Kenner dogs may wreak havoc with my digestive system. I assume dogs will be served at this game, as well. Courtside seats!

[thedragon]