This Week in Wrenball: Let's Get This Over With

Not walking through that door

William & Mary's men's basketball team won 77 games over the past four seasons, the most by any Tribe team over a similar span in 65 years. In the previous 10 seasons, W&M made the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) tournament final four times after never having reached the precipice of the NCAA Tournament before. W&M beat Maryland, Wake Forest, and N.C. State on the road in recent years. Two different Tribe players signed contracts with the Boston Celtics in the past two years.

We're gonna need those memories to keep us warm this season. The Golden Age, as it were, is over.

Omar Prewitt and Daniel Dixon graduated, taking with them 34.9 points per game. Jack Whitman transferred to Kansas, and then left, oddly. In any case, he was W&M's third-leading scorer and second-leading rebounder last season. Greg Malinowksi transferred to Georgetown - he made 52 threes on 40.0% shooting and was probably the team's best perimeter defender. Those four represented 64.5% of the Tribe's scoring and 54.6% of the squad's rebounding in 2016-17, while accounting for 60.1% of the team's three pointers.

The cupboard, she is looking bare. With only 10 scholarship players, and only one returning starter, the Tribe is both inexperienced and lacking in depth.

David Cohn is that only returning starter, and while he's poised to become the all-time assist leader in program history, he's limited offensively. Sophomore Nathan Knight showed a ton of promise in his rookie season, and offers W&M the kind of skilled, athletic big man we haven't seen since Tim Rusthoven, but he's prone to foul trouble, and the Tribe has exactly zero post players with even a minute of collegiate experience behind him. Connor Burchfield is a great shooter, if someone can get him a shot. He and Paul Rowley are nice complementary players. The problem this year is that both of them will have to start.

Boston College transfer Matt Milon showed promise in the Tribe's pre-season tour to Jamaica, as did freshmen Luke Loewe and Jihar Williams.

W&M opened its season Friday on the road against a High Point team that was a middling Big South outfit last year. It wasn't pretty. The Wrens made just five of 22 three-pointers, had just four assists on 20 total made field goals (all four by Cohn - nobody else dropped a single dime), were outrebounded by 11, and committed 15 turnovers to the Panthers' nine. High Point built a 12-point halftime lead before burying the overmatched Tribe in the second half on the way to a 100-64 win.

We've begun a season where a number of CAA teams look to take big steps forward, and the green and gold have pretty clearly taken several in the opposite direction. In Tony We Trust, and all that, but if this team is to win even 10 games, it'll take one of his great coaching jobs.

It's not all bleak, if you're willing to expand your parameters. The Tribe's had a strong recruiting year, securing commitments from four highly-regarded prospects, at least by W&M standards. And speaking of W&M standards, three of them are named Thornton, Quinn, and Chase. Those are first names. Those guys can't get here soon enough.

If you came here seeking standard-issue Wrenball optimism, you'll need to give us a few weeks. Or, if we beat Hampton on Wednesday, a few days. Our love for the Wrens remains unconditional, but it might be a tough love this season.