Obviously things can change a ton from year to year and I haven’t really looked at any of the teams, but I like that we have some games that – on first blush – don’t seem out of reach.
Champion Christian and Kansas Christian should be easy Ws. East Texas A&M was 5-26 last year. Eastern Washington 8-22. Eastern Illinois 9-19. Shouldn’t be outclassed in those, three chances at Ws. Little Rock and ETSU both won 17, but we were within 4 with a minute to go at LR last year and 15 of their 17 wins were Quad 4. We played 8 games vs Quads 1 & 2 last season, they only played 3. As it played out on the floor, wasn’t nearly as much separation in the teams as records might indicate. Obviously there’s going to be tons of turnover so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it’s about as good a barometer as we’ve got at the moment.
Samford lost their coach to Texas A&M, but brought in Lennie Acuff from Lipscomb, and we know what his teams have looked like. So they should be pretty stiff competition. North Texas was 22-8 last year, but their coach left for West Virginia so they’re in their first year in a new system.
SMU’s in Year 2 under Andy Enfield, they won 24 and were a Top 50 NET team. Vandy’s in Year 2 under their coach, won 20, beat Kentucky & Ole Miss, finished Top 50 NET. Gonna be tough rows to hoe. And then obviously Arkansas and the Jordan-Pippen alma mater clash will be … good paydays and fun to see.
Seems like a pretty good mix of games you can go win, games you can compete in, and games that keep the lights on. Hopefully will be enough of the first two to get the guys feeling good and confident when conference play rolls around. Really hoping we aren’t destroyed by injuries this year and we get to see what Coach Shulman & Co. can do with a full season at full strength.
