I thought they could have won 3-5 more games last season. Looking at the team now, I see anywhere between 7-9 conference wins! Some of those wins will come from players and some will come from coaching! Jeff Capel: we have to be a very good rebounding team, because we're small and we're gonna win being small!
Are you saying that going into the season you thought we could have won 3-5 more games, or looking back on the season, we should have won 3-5 more games?
I suppose you can maybe point to five games that could have been winnable -- Montana, OK State, NC State, maybe Cuse at home, and then ND in the ACC tournament. Of those five, I say that only the NC game was one that we should have won -- before we had a total meltdown to lose it. In the other four games, we battled back from deficits to get within a shot or two.
But if one is to count any if those five as "could have wons," then just as easily the games with UC Santa Barbara, High Point, Towson and Delaware St could be counted as could have lost -- keeping in mind that Delaware St was the second worst team in all of Div I Hoops.
Nostalgia is often kind to our memories, but unfortunately, there's no mistaking how bad our team was last year.
I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer to my fellow Pitt Hoops fans. It's just that unreasonable expectations almost always leads to severe disappointment it's fan base. Sometimes it's worse than disappointment -- such as anger, and then finally apathy to the point of no longer being fans -- which is somewhat where we are now.
There aren't many of us Pitt Hoop fans left. I would certainly know because I went to all but one of the games last year. I was even one of the 800 or so at the final home game with Wake Forest.
This year should be a little better. But there's is absolutely no way at all that it will be 7-9 ACC conference wins better unless 6 or 7 ACC teams decide to cancel basketball in the next two months and forfiet their games.
It was tough watching last year because it wasn't just that we were historically bad, it was that I didn't see guys like Carr or Parker (or even Terrell or Shamiel) as guys who would ever turn a program around. Knowing that next to nothing was coming in with the recruiting class Stalling had coming for 2018 made it worse.
What Capel did getting guys like McGowens and Toney was pretty incredible and it's possible that one or both could end of being higher end ACC players.
But I'm most hopeful that HCJC can secure one or two higher end recruits for the 2019 class that will make watching a season with 2-3 ACC wins max a little more bearable.
