Basketball Summer Preview Series: Newcomers

Hey, look!  A basketball post!  Try to put football out of your mind for a few brief moments as I look forward to basketball.

The upcoming season may prove to be one of the most interesting/important in recent memory as the CU mens basketball program tries to carry over the momentum built by last year's NIT warriors.   Periodically throughout the summer I will be posting parts of a preview series to keep the basketball flame alive while everyone else is gearing up for football.  Hopefully this will keep my start-of-the-season preview post from ballooning into 30,000 words.

Previous part: Roster Turnover

Next up: Newcomers

I talked last month about the importance of roster management and it's use in mitigating the resulting drop-offs related to roster turnover.  It cannot be stated enough that the program lost 60% of minutes, 75% of points, 48% of rebounds, and 63% of assists to graduation and the NBA after last year's run to the NIT Final Four. The programs ability to cope with that loss through replacements and current players stepping up could have ramifications far beyond this upcoming season, as it previously took the program 7 seasons to recover from a similar production loss after the David Harrison years.

Youth is certainly the order of the day, but careful management of the roster during the last recruiting cycle has left the program with both roster balance and the ability, on paper at least, to compete in a weaker basketball conference like the Pac-12.  The resulting crew of newcomers looking to fill the shoes of Alec Burks, Cory Higgins, Levi Knutson, Marcus Relphorde, and Trent Beckley is an interesting mix of transfers, JuCos, and traditional freshmen that have me thinking happy thoughts during a time that should be full of fretful worry. 


I'll take a look at each new addition to the roster and what their role could be before summing up my thoughts on the 2011 class of newcomers.

Basketball Summer Preview Series: Roster Turnover

Hey, look!  A basketball post!  It's just less than a week away from the official start of summer, and I'm already back to basketball on the brain.  I believe this is what the late, great Barry White was singing about on the Space Jam soundtrack.   

The upcoming season may prove to be one of the most interesting/important in recent memory as the CU mens basketball program tries to carry over the momentum built by last year's NIT warriors.   Periodically throughout the summer I will be posting parts of a preview series  to keep the basketball flame alive while everyone else is gearing up for football.  Hopefully this will keep my start-of-the-season preview post from ballooning into 30,000 words.

First up: Roster turnover