Great Expectations

As always, this blog is Mocs-centric. It's been fun and all that I've been talking about the SoCon a lot over the last couple of days, and that will continue to happen throughout the year. But in the end, it all comes back to the Mocs on this blog.

The pressure is mounting as the season nears. What should the expectations be for the Mocs this year?

Let's get into what some of the expectations should be for the Mocs this coming season.

For a baseline, the Mocs should expect to win 20 games. This is not unreasonable given the schedule. If they can win the same number of SoCon games as last year, that would give them 12 wins, and then if they win all their out of conference games (which they will probably be favored to win all of them), that would put them at 20 regular season wins. Not unreasonable at all.

The Mocs should also expect to at least get a bye in the North- if not win the North. They are as good as any team in the North, even though there are about five teams that can contend for the North championship. The Mocs need to get that bye and, considering the returning talent, should win the North title.

A couple of extra little regular season expectations that I believe the Mocs can set for themselves are the regular season SoCon title and clinch a postseason bid in the NIT at least. Davidson and College of Charleston are good, but there is no reason that the Mocs can not have the best record in the conferencec if they play up to their capabilities.

Also, the Mocs could certainly win one of their big four games- Indiana, Butler, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Kentucky is almost impossible (catch that halftime score tonight?) to think that the Mocs will be able to win that game. But Indiana and Tennessee are picked to finish in the bottom half of their conferences (some even pick Tennessee to be at the very bottom). This would do wonders for Shulman- and for the Mocs RPI, and their potential NCAA seed if they get that far.

They should also expect to advance to at least the SoCon Championship Game. Anything can happen in a one game tournament, but if the Mocs can get to the Championship Game, that will be an accomplishment. Follow that up with a win, and this will be a memorable season.

If the Mocs could somehow follow that up with a couple of NCAA Tournament wins, then this season will be nothing but a success. They could do that.

But let's start with first things first. They need to win as many regular season games as possible.  This is not a year to say that all that matters is the SoCon Tournament. The regular season matters....and it all starts Sunday.

GO MOCS!