Completely agree with points 1 and 2, but your take is also seeding doesn’t matter until it does. So seeding matters, just not as much as how well your team is playing down the stretch. Our identity is a collection of scorers who don’t really play cohesively well and has started to play good d, but can’t rebound.
Will be very interesting to see how we finish. As JS alluded to, down the stretch schedule is much easier than first 4 games in conference, but we need to beat Vandy or Miss St away and upset one of Bama or UK and win the games we’re supposed to win to gain momentum heading into the SEC tournament. 2 wins in the SEC tournament with a strong finish in conference should put us in that 5-7 range with some confidence of being a second weekend team.
Will we be better with Chendall Weaver back on the floor? We need the rebounding help and he’s a beast on that front and our best defender, but whose minutes will he take? Kent’s? Larry has been looking good lately as a distributor and on ball defender. I don’t think we sacrifice Pope’s minutes much either with his scoring potential.
Excited to see if RT can earn his money and get the most out of our iso ball team. Kaluma, Pope, Mark, and Johnson are as good of a set of scorers as we’ve had since our elite 8 underachieving run in RT’s roster inheriting year, and all are experienced, Johnson excepted.