No A10 teams in Gary Parrish's preseason top 30

[madness31]

The Zags preseason ranking is very understandable given the return of tallent. They had a quality season last year and should be expected to improve. It is risky to take a team that graduated the majority of its guard play and will rely heavily on freshman so I wouldn't expect to see X in the preseason rankings. There is no doubt we have a chance to finish in the top 20 but we have to win games first. If we start strong we will enter the top 20 much quicker than usual but why go out on a limb until you see proof of play.

Other programs get the benefit of the doubt for various reasons but we are not quite there yet. Obviously our respect has made great strides recently but this sort of thing happens in stages. Who needs that pressure anyway. Let the Freshman play loose and win games and after their confidence is up we will be ranked and the nerves will be gone.

[Bmuskie]

Now Now everyone let's not get all bent out of shape because Xavier's not in someone's Top 25. We have heard/read/seen similar things to this in the past. I said it before last season and I will say it again this season. I have been a fan of Xavier for many years and looking back at the past 25 years I can only think of one season where Xavier was predicted to be a very good team by the "experts" and finish the regular season with an NCAA tournament berth. Almost every year we hear about how Xavier isn't good enough/doesn't have enough talent to even make it into the NCAA tournament by someone. yet somehow X has 18 NCAA tournaments under its belt in that time frame. In other words don't take stock in what anyone (even Local Media) has to say about X. We know these guys are good and will work their butts off to get to the tournament and prove people wrong. They almost always do.

[Mr. Neutral]

I, for one, am not upset about not being in this particular top 25, for several reasons.

(1) It's July, and other than being something to talk about, obviously doesn't mean much.

(2) X did lose its top 3 players in terms of experience, and its only real PG, so there's bound to be a learning curve for the new guys, including the new starters, even if they're not freshmen.

(3) The ideal situation would be to be in the rankings 52 weeks a year. But I'd rather start out of the rankings and climb into them than the other way around. X's non-conf. schedule gives us more than enough chances to make some noise nationally.

[MillerTime]

If you look at this from an objective point of view, we are the only team from the A-10 that should remotely be considered a top 30 team, and I am not sure we should be. We lost our only pg, our starting sg, and probably our best overall player. That's a lot to lose. While I think and hope we will be very good at the end of the season, it depends on a lot of "ifs." If the freshmen point guards mature quickly, if Crawford is eligible, if Frease challenges Love for the starting center spot. It's hard to put a team with this many ifs in a top 30 preseason.

A top sleeper team? No question...

[muskieman]

Miller time and Mr N we lost Doellman, Cage and Cole the year before and that didn't seem to slow down the Miller train.

It is not like the incoming guys are 2nd tier players.

[Mr. Neutral]

In college b-ball, your backcourt is hugely important, and even after losing our entire front line two years ago, we returned a 3-year starter at SG, and our starting PG who had 3 years of major college experience.

We have neither next year. We might have more overall talent, but the backcourt and center spots have to sort themselves out, and it might take a while for that to happen-or all season, for all we know.

[muskieman]

I say you will be surprised and happy.

You just have to learn to trust.