Knee jerk reactions on your team

[gofriars08]

Yeah I am most impressed relative to expectations with Xavier. Really good depth and Christon is clearly a difference-maker.

[butlerguy03]

Butler's recruiting class looks better than I had anticipated. The team will be under .500 in the Big East.

[Bill Marsh]

Butler's recruiting class looks better than I had anticipated. The team will be under .500 in the Big East.

I really don't know where they'll finish any more. I didn't expect much, but they looked awfully good the other night.

[Lavinwood]

The way I see it:

Trending up:
-PC
-Xavier
-Creighton
-Nova
-Butler

Trending down:
-SJ
-Marquette
-G'Town

About expected thus far:
-SH
-DePaul

[butlerguy03]

I really don't know where they'll finish any more. I didn't expect much, but they looked awfully good the other night.

I think it's safe to say this team would be a lock for the positive-side-of-the-bubble team if Rose Jones was available.

[Xudash]

I got a kick out of the pre-season rankings for the conference for Xavier.

Obviously, that placement was based on Xavier being one of the new kids on the block, as well as perceptions based on last year's anomaly.

There is some serious talent and length on this basketball team. Assuming Farr and Reynolds continue to develop, which is a safe assumption, because Mack does develop his players, I'd say anything is possible for this edition of Xavier basketball at this point. Stainbrook simply is going to be a rock in the middle. Semaj is Semaj, only now he appears to be getting his FT stroke under control (i.e. 6 for 7 against Miami the other night).

Overall, Mack can go about 10 deep, and the scoring is coming from everywhere.

I still like Creighton and Marquette, in particular, at the top. I see Nova being formidable. Georgetown will correct. And I get that Providence is charging back. But I still see Xavier ending up at no worse than a 4th place finish in the conference. All this assumes what is true for all our teams: no impactful injuries and probably a couple fortunate bounces here and there along the way; this conference is that tight, and that's a good thing.

[marquette]

I have no idea where Marquette is going to land at this point. We have some serious issues to figure out with our offense and not a lot of time to do it. I still see us being a contender for the title, but if we are 5-3 coming out of the Wisconsin game I will probably go more along the lines of 4th place.

[XtoDC]

It is still really early to say. Xavier hasn't played outside of their home gym yet. I'm not a mathematician but I am pretty sure half of their conference games will take place on other team's courts. They have won their first 4 games, and some guys have looked pretty good while doing it, but I don't think that necessarily catapults them from a 7th place NIT finish to a contender.

However, this thread is about knee jerk reactions to your team so I am going to try and be more definitive since it should be everyone's understanding that this is based on small sample sizes. Obviously when conference play starts up those great OOC records don't carry forward, everyone is 0-0 again. I liked the stock up and stock down thing, so based on my preseason expectations here is where everyone falls:

Stock Up
Xavier
Butler
Providence

Neutral
Creighton
Villanova
Seton Hall
Depaul
St. John's

Stock Down
Marquette
Georgetown

[Chalmers0]

Xavier has exceeded even my personal expectations, which were decently high, but obviously we will know a lot more after 3 games in Atlantis. The emergence of James Farr has been a huge shock to everyone and players like Randolph, Stainbrook and Dee specifically have all brought more to the table than I think anyone expected to start the season. Going to be interesting to see how the chemistry continues to grow and how it translates to tougher opponents and when we aren't in Cintas.

Marquette and GTown have obviously looked less than stellar so hopefully they turn it around sooner rather than later.

I had high hopes for both Nova and PC this year and both have met those expectations so far, despite Nova having much of a tough test yet.

I think I've seen about what I expected at this point from SHU, SJU, Creighton and DePaul (both good and bad)

I guess I still don't understand a lot of growing hype behind Butler right now. From what I've seen (pretty much all of the Princeton and Vanderbilt games) I haven't been overly impressed. They almost let Princeton and Vandy beat them at home, neither of which is even a bubble team this year most likely. We will know a little more about Vandy after they place PC today (A game I think PC runs away with). I'm not trying to be overly hard on Butler but I just haven't seen anything yet to say "Stock Rising." (FWIW I predicted Butler finishing 10th this year and while I don't feel as confident as when I made the pick I still think it's extremely possible).

[MUSeashells&Balloons]

Not feeling good right now. But I have never felt good in November. Every November I think this is the worst team yet and then in February I think they are the best.