Largely agree with this...

Posted on: September 19, 2023 at 16:42:42 CT

Sullivan just came into a really difficult situation, and she did as well as can be expected in a short time period getting some decent players out of the portal to pair with the best returning players we had. It would have been great if Dixon, Cox and Buckley had stuck around, but can’t blame them for leaving. They all landed in good situations: Dixon is a key starter for a top 5 team at Florida, Cox is starting at #25 Western Kentucky, same with Buckley at a good TCU team that is receiving votes in the poll. Dixon and Cox will be playing in the NCAA tourney, maybe Buckley too.

I agree this team is going to be better at the end of the year than they are now. How much better is the big question. Hitting % needs to pick up, with the several players getting the lions share of the attacks. The tendency to get off to slow starts needs to be addressed, and if not it’s going to kill us against the better SEC teams, particularly on the road. And Dudley, who I like a lot, needs to keep improving. She’s got to play at a high level for us to be successful.

We’ll see if we can pull off some upsets against the top 5-6 teams in the conference, and take care of business against our peers and the teams we ought to beat.

RPI doesn’t matter much at this point, but we will have plenty of opportunities now to get some high quality wins. I prefer looking at the RPI Futures predictive model, which has us this week at #66, and a 13-16 record. Just two weeks ago we were at 47 and a 15-14 record, until we went and lost to Buffalo and Eastern Illinois.