In thinking about where Penn is going to get winning basketball this year I did an analysis of the players getting the most time for the last five games of the six years of Steve's program. I assume that those players made the most contribution. That's why they were on the floor.

Then I looked to see how many of those players got significant time in their first years. (There were two transfers.) 22 of the thirty were in the top five in their first years. (That's 73%.) Good players get time early. Last year's team was not so full of stars to deny time to very good newcomers.

This year's team will have only one such instant contributor in Clark S. It will have to get four starters without that Freshman significance. Fortunately, the team has an outlier in Spinosa, so it will need three new faces.

These odds suggest that two of those players will be freshmen, with only one existing player upping his game enough to start. That will most likely be Smith who may buck the odds like Spinosa. This history does not look kindly on the prospects of Thrower, Laz, or Holland breaking through. Sure one or more, like Laz, or Smith, last year, will contribute depth. However, one does not win many games if its depth players are getting the majority of minutes.

In the Donahue era, such late developing-players turned out very well five times (Woods Foreman, Howard, Rothschild, Spinosa). Note, however, that the first four were Allen recruits who were probably mismanaged during their freshman years. Steve has, so far, only one player develop into a starter after a modest freshman start, Spinosa.

This suggests that two or three of the freshmen will emerge as starters, just as AJ, Devon, and Betley did in 2017, and Dingle, Martz, and Monroe did in 2020. That is what happens when a team returns so little talent.

Could they fund a winner? AJ, Betley, and Dingle are the examples of Donahue Frosh who STARRED their first year. The other sixteen Donahue recruits did not. Those odds say that Nick and Clark will be surrounded by depth players. It is worrying that,at best, Penn may have only one good scorer on the court a third of the time, assuming that Nick and Clark are healthy. Should they miss time, Penn will have no reliable scorer on the court a third of the time, and a defense keying on the one scorer the rest of the game.

Unless we have a winter of blue snow. Is there a Betley, Dingle, or AJ suiting up for the first time this year? I suppose we could find a diamond in the rough like Dingle or Betley. There is no high-rated recruit in this class. Or maybe Cam

So, forgive me for concluding that a team that loses six of its top ten players will struggle. Let's hope it will be interesting at least. Twenty losses are more likely than an appearance in Ivy Madness. My but I hope I am wrong.