Hi there. You may remember this blog from many moons ago. I haven't posted anything on here in well over a year, and I've been largely absent from Twitter as well. A lot has happened in that time. I graduated from college, got a job (working in basketball funnily enough), and lived in Atlanta for a few months. During that time, I almost completely fell out of love with college basketball, for a number of reasons. Since I started working a full time job, my free time became much more sparse and I wasn't finding myself wanting to throw on games during that time, preferring to play video games, watch TV or movies, other sports, or just relax and do nothing. I was basically down to watching just Syracuse games, along with a maybe one or two others during the week. Part of it was this very blog. I felt an obligation to watch as many games as I could, be an expert on all the teams, have opinions on every player. Watching college basketball started to feel like work. I felt like I couldn't miss any big games and needed to be watching college basketball from 6-12 every night. Beyond that, the transfer portal made college basketball a year round endeavor, and keeping up with ever-changing rosters was its own challenge. Much has been made of the portal and I want to be 100% clear: I like the portal. I'm all for ease of player movement and these guys making money through NIL. I think it is great for the players and that's the most important thing in my mind, the players make this sport what it is. However, from my end, tracking who was going to be playing where made the work needed to be prepared for the season arduous, and in order to to be as prepared as I wanted, it took a ton of effort, even when there were no games on. All of this and more led to me just wanting no part of college basketball recently. So you may be wondering why I'm writing this at all. Well, it's March Madness time. And there is nothing more fun that reignites my passion for college basketball quite like these few weeks in March and April. It is the best sporting event of the year, period, and I'm going to be locked in on it throughout the tournament. Will I be writing? I have no clue. I'll probably be tweeting. I do have to say, it's daunting to reengage like this. I haven't been watching and already don't recognize a large portion of players. I don't know what my future holds. I just know that I'm loving watching college basketball again.
2022-23 Record: 19-15, 7-9 WCC (5th) Coach: Mark Pope, Fifth Season Departures: Rudi Williams, G (Graduation) Gideon George, F (Graduation) Tanner Toolson, W (Transfer) Arrivals: Dawson Baker, G (Transfer from UC Irvine) Aly Khalifa, C (Transfer from Charlotte) Projected Starting Lineup PG: Dallin Hall SG: Jaxson Robinson SF: Spencer Johnson PF: Fousseyni Traore C: Aly Khalifa Roster Breakdown The Cougars are coming into the conference from the WCC, and they'll have to raise their game to keep their high level of success with their move to the Big 12. The good news for Mark Pope is he has a lot of returning production to help the transition to the new conference. While two of their top four scorers depart, the Cougars do bring back seven of their top nine scorers. Leading the returners is big man Fousseyni Traore , who led the team in scoring last season. He put up 12.9 points, 7.8 rebounds, 1.5 steals, and 0.7 blocks, and his rebounding and block numbers were actually down from hi...
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