This Week in Wrenball: Not in the Face

Here at the internet's third (maybe fourth)-leading purveyor of William & Mary men's basketball information, we're not in the business of beating dead horses*. Good thing, because the equine carcass of the fallout from the firing of Tony Shaver heading into a season where he had an odds-on chance to win the CAA is deader than Rasputin.

* Let's not kid ourselves. Beating dead horses, hitting recurring themes, tilting at familiar windmills - those things are our stock in trade. Bite me, Randy Newman.

"What have I gotten myself into?"

No, we're not here to wallow in what might have been. W&M's 2019-20 season starts today, and we've got to go to mock-battle with the team we've got. New head man Dane Fischer sends his team out against a fairly mediocre High Point team this evening, a team that will give the green in Green and Gold an alternative meaning.

W&M returns players that accounted for 38.2% of the team's 2018-19 minutes, 13.7% of made three-pointers, 38.6% of rebounds, 44.8% of assists, and 38.2% of all points. Without context, those numbers represent a daunting challenge. If you realize that senior pivot Nathan "The Commodore" Knight represents 65% of the returning rebounds, 41.3% of assists, and 73.3% of the points, you begin to understand the nature of the task at hand.

Knight, arguably the best big man in W&M history, enters the season on the short-list for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar award, given to the best center in the NCAA. (Shouldn't it be called the Lew Alcindor award, though?). He averaged 21.0 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game last season, the first NCAA Division I player to do so since Tim Duncan in 1992. That's lofty territory. The first-team All-CAA and first-team CAA All-Defense awardee will undoubtedly be the center of attention for opposing defenses, and savvy coaches will go after him at the defensive end in an effort to get him in foul trouble.

Fischer will be counting very, very heavily on transfers Bryce Barnes (5'11" guard, averaged 6.1 points, 2.7 assists and 2.4 rebounds per in 25 games at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Tyler Hamilton (a 6'4" guard who averaged 1.8 points and 1.3 boards in 11.8 minutes/game at Penn), and Andy Van Vliet (a 7'1" center with excellent outside touch, who redshirted last year after transferring from Wisconsin, where he averaged 3.4 points and 1.4 rebounds his junior season) to augment returning point guards Luke Loewe and Thornton Scott. Scott showed flashes during his freshman year, while Loewe is a decent defender and not much more. Your humble blogger doesn't really know much yet about freshmen Miguel Ayesa (who apparently can shoot the ball with some aplomb), Ben Wight, and Thatcher Stone, other than the fact that he's going to confuse the latter with Thornton Scott a lot, and that at least one of them had better be a stud if this team's gonna do anything at all**.

** If you're thinking this all sounds like a shaky foundation upon which to build a winning team, you may be correct.

Lionel Richie's Commodores had depth and experience. Nathan Knight's Pips, a lot less so.

CAA coaches tabbed the Tribe to finish 7th, which says a lot about Knight, and not much about coaches' ability to forecast. CBS Sports' Matt Norlander rates W&M 296th out of 353 Division I teams, which feels about right. For me, if we win 10 games and finish out of the CAA cellar, it's a good season.

Which is a Huge step down from where this squad might've been had the AD given Tony Shaver one more year. Not over it. Not nearly.