mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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03-25-19 10:04 AM - Post#282658
In response to mobrien
That all seems pretty spot on. My take on your questions:
1 and 3) I'm not too worried about Towns getting back to where he was.
That being said, I am worried about further injuries. If this year was all about Towns being hurt, that would be one thing, but aside from Kirkwood, everyone in that starting five (plus Juzang) either missed significant time with injury or was significantly less effective trying to play through injury. We've had pretty terrible injury luck over the past two years, and while I expect (hope?) that will regress, I suspect there will be some injuries - so who and when will be very important.
2) I'd like to say that the trend makes me confident that Harvard will open up next season carrying the ball around in Fort Knox, but it doesn't really. In its two NIT games, Harvard posted its highest TO rates in a month. But to some extent, that's the broader point here.
What Harvard needs to do is curtail the really, really bad games, rather than staying 20% and under all the time. Losing the games at URI and UVM and the home collapse against Cornell are the ones that I'd focus on - reducing those TO rates from 30-35% down to 20-25% would have been enough to take home those contests.
Harvard's going to lose a random one or two both when opponents shoot insanely well (@Yale2, vs. Northeastern, @Dartmouth) and when it shoots insanely poorly (@USF, @Cornell). It can't *also* lose the winnable games above because it turns the ball over on 1-of-3 possessions.
My understanding about the schedule is that the opportunities will be there, though two HUGE variables will be the MTE matchups and how many other Ivies can crack the Top 75 or Top 135.
If pretty much fully healthy, Harvard should be in good shape to put together a decent resume, like in 2012 and 2014, because Tommy won't have much to fiddle with. And the good news is that this class has played its best basketball against the toughest competition (frankly, avoiding BAD losses will be the bigger challenge).
Health is everything, though. Hard to project out much until we know where that's going to land - though the ceiling is extremely high.
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