It's really hard to say given all the uncertainty with injuries. For how long will Traore be out? For how long will Cooper Koch be out? Will Payton Sandfort's wrist(?) ever heal up?
On top of that, there are some weird defensive statistical anomalies. The defense is better than what the preseason models predicted - 77th, nationally. Currently our opponents are shooting a very low %age against us from three point range, are turning the ball over a lot and are not getting to the FT line. The flip side is that they are making 55% of their two point attempts against us which is particularly bizarre given that we are blocking 14.3% of their two point attempts (32nd in the nation). No other team that blocks shots at this rate is allowing such a high two point shooting percentage. I feel like some regression to the mean is in order for one or more of these statistical categories and I imagine that the defense will get worse once it happens - in particular, I think the three point defense is luck. But if the two point defense gets better, then this could be a legitimately solid defensive team and, given the high shot blocking rate, there's a chance that could happen - albeit a small one.
In the pre-season, I figured this team would be top 5 or top 10 offensively so if they could just get the defense into the top 80 (where it is now), we'd be in for a fun ride. But the offense has been considerably worse than I was expecting and, frankly, I'm starting to think that this might be a real drop off and not a small sample size fluke.
