No I'm Not Dead, I've Just Been Taking Stock of the Situation

So I bet you all thought that this blog was going to succumb to the usual "five posts and kick the bucket" wayside. Well. You're wrong. In the immortal words of Alex Trebek, "Oh no...no no...no." I would quote Jeff Jones to the same effect, but this is a family site for Christ's sake. In any event, I was looking at the Holy Cross 2009-10 basketball prospectus today. Why? Because AU doesn't have a 2009-10 basketball prospectus (nudge, nudge) yet, and I wanted to scope out the competition like any good fledgling basketball blog hosting guy.

So I figured I'd take a stab at seeing what we've got left after last season. Brace yourselves out there in AU basketball blog land, it ain't pretty. There's not a whole lot we can bank on. (As a short aside, this is in sharp contrast to Holy Cross who has 4/5 of their starters returning as well as 5 other letter winners. Oh dear sweet Clawed Z. Eagle.) Anyway, here's some quick hits on the stats and players we've got returning for the 2009-10 campaign.

- Out of 64.5 total points per game scored, 9 points per game are returning. 6.3 of these are Nick Hendra, who was last year's fourth leading scorer. This is a fact that actually surprises me. (In a good way, Nick!) I would've thought Nichols had a higher PPG just because of minutes. Shows what I know. That's a pretty grim statistic to start out with, but it becomes brighter when you consider that...

- Out of 200 possible minutes per game, the seven seniors that we graduated played an average of 169.2 minutes. If you figure that Hendra is going to get about 30 minutes a game (and that's lowballing it), his scoring should move up to around 10-12 PPG. Under the same assumption, Lumpkins will increase his production to the same levels. Make no bones about it, we will need at LEAST two other Eagles to step up their production mightily in order for us to be competitive, but the 169.2 minutes per game that are now available to the remaining Eagles should allow for that and more.

Now, let's be serious here for a moment. I've given you two statistics. Logic (and common practice) would dictate that two does not a blog post on basketball statistics make. Unlike Holy Cross, however, AU does not have the luxury of a veritable shit ton (that's a statistical term, look it up) of returning players. Any conclusions or calculations I made based on the fact that Lumpkins and Hendra are the only returns who saw any legitimate play time (sorry Luptak) would be irresponsible at best and completely worthless at worst.

Let's look at the bright side (which I will greatly expand on in my next post about where the strengths for the upcoming season are):

- Vlad Moldoveanu has the size and experience (20.3 PPG over 8 games in the 2004 FIBA) to be a force in the Patriot League.

- Our sophomores, who had the benefit of the seniors' experience and advice last year, should come back eager to prove themselves and with some tricks up their sleeves.

So you know what to look forward to, there's two upcoming posts from me:
- Expanding on the sophomores
- Breaking down the Holy Cross prospectus

I'm also going to look into what AU Athletics thinks the TV coverage will be for this season. Stay tuned, and be sure to leave your feedback!

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!