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This game on pace to be 76-76 going into overtime.

If only to humor Old Titan (as if THAT were possible! ), I've decided to proceed with my annual pre-season prediction. Frankly, I was going to pass this year, because I feel like I know less about this team's pre-season prospects than at any other time over the past 20+ years. We have a new coaching staff, a young untested backcourt, a fairly deep and talented frontcourt (in a former coach's scheme, at least - and assuming that Javan White is fully healthy), and NO public exhibition games. We have NO idea what kind of offense/defense will be run, and whether our guys have bought into the system yet, or will ever. We do know that the team has averaged just over 50 points per game (ugh!) in two scrimmages against a non-D 1 school and against one of the best squads in the NCAA on paper, but who knows how these scrimmages were approached by the team/coaching staff. What we DO know about is our schedule, the relative strength of the teams we will play, and a dearth of home D-1 games. So, without much information, I'm going strictly by analytics, with a little gut feel at the end. Here we go... According to most pre-season publications, we are ranked in the lower half of our conference, and Ken Pom and SI both have us around #250 in the country. Let's just assume that we compare that ranking to each team on our schedule, giving the home team a +50 advantage (so a 250 ranked team would beat a 201 at home, but lose to a 299 on the road, etc.). I'm also "gifting" us the four non-D1 games on our home schedule. Under this scenario, we would go 0-9 on the non-conference road, and 0-2 on the non-conference at home, and 1-1 neutral (although the win would come against our "neutral" host Pepperdine at #321). And, in the Summit we would be 3-11, with a sweep of Western Illinois and a home win against Omaha. This would tie us for sixth in the Summit with Omaha, and close out our season at 8-23. While all of that sounds plausible, it also places our record remarkably close with last year, which likely means that the "pundits" don't know anything more about us than we do, and that they've relied solely on last year's results as an indicator of this year's prospects (probably not a bad way to approach it). However, we do have two extra non D-1 games compared to last year, so we really should see better results. Color me with rose-colored glasses, but I think last season was an anomaly, and that the players didn't reach their full potential under the guidance of the coaching staff in place. So, I'm going to give us a little "bump" for new energy and chemistry (and a new logo!) within the basketball program, and raise our initial ranking to 200 vs. 250. Under the same +50 home advantage, this improves our record to 12-19, by stealing a road win at #278 UALR, and additional home Summit wins vs. NDSU, South Dakota and Fort Wayne. We would finish 6th in the Summit at 6-8. This feels more reasonable to me... However, I'm going to even take it a step further, as I believe that the Summit is a little bit down over last year, and I think we have a decent shot at a winning record in conference play, especially after this team has begun to gel and buy-in to the Mills approach after a brutal non-conference schedule. As a result, I'm going to predict our Summit record at 8-6, and our final regular season record at 14-17, and that we will be one of those dangerous teams that no one wants on their side of the bracket in Sioux Falls. W-L by month and cumulative: November 2-6 December 3-5; 5-11 January 5-3; 10-14 February 4-3; 14-17 OT, it's all yours!!!