I appreciate your patience, Steve. I'm trying to be patient too. I just wasn't expecting this season to require THIS much patience. I knew this wasn't going to be a complete team, I thought 20 wins and an NIT bid like that one college basketball writer predicted was way too optimistic. But I thought there was enough coming back and coming in that the team could be competitive. Win more than it lost, maybe even win a game in the conference tournament, 16-15/17-14 or thereabouts when all was said and done. I still don't think that was too much to expect at all. But right now, we're a long way from being that team. Seven kids on the 11-man active scholarship roster were here last year. Two of those are 3-year starters, two others are in their third year of Division 1 college basketball. One of those is one of the top 3-point shooters in the NCAA. One of the new players is a junior JUCO transfer, another is the most highly-touted/rated recruit of the Ferry Era, maybe the most highly-regarded Duquesne recruit since Damian Saunders. So yeah, I expected more than this. Sure we're a young team relatively speaking, but it's not like the window for development and improvement is THAT wide open. Nearly half of our current active scholarship roster, including 4 out of 5 current starters, and the three leading scorers, is out of NCAA eligibility after next season. And with the revolving door that is NCAA Division I basketball, there's no guarantee anyone else will stick around for their full eligiblity.

Most of us who contribute to this board were pretty optimistic going into the season, a season which we thought could set the stage nicely for a serious post-season run next year. Now I'm thinking next year's incoming players will just create more chemistry problems than real improvement. If there's no playing time for Des this year, who's going to sit next year to accommodate Castro and Jackson? Des either needs to transfer or take a developmental redshirt or his junior year will be more lost than his sophomore year. I would prefer the latter as I still think there's a ton of potential there and I'd love to have him around for 2 years once Colter, Mason and Stevens are gone, but I kind of doubt he's going to be part of the long-term plan.

Meanwhile, there were some on the other board who thought last year's modest improvement was all because of Soko and that with him gone, we would pretty much be back to square (year) one this year. Unfortunately, those folks are looking awfully prescient right now. You could argue that the team two years ago was actually ahead of this year's team by this point of the season, even if its potential was much more limited. Or so we think...