In my observations of college basketball, there are 2 essential components of a team to even allow you the chance to compete:
(1) on offense, someone that is an elite dribbler and can penetrate and create higher percentage shots for himself and others---layups, dunks, open jump shots. There are exponentially more of these short quick guys in the world than 6 foot 10 plus guys, so there is no excuse not to have at least one unless you are tortiously interfered with by another school.
(2) on defense, a rim protector that prevents teams from getting dunks and layups --- the highest percentage shots. Nowadays every good team has at least one of these guys, and they are almost all pretty dang close to 7 feet or above now. 6 foot 10 seems to be the minimum. You have to scour the globe to find enough humans this tall, which is what college basketball does.
Without these if the other team has them, you are stuck hoping you have a great shooting night and the other team has a lousy shooting night, and sometimes that's not even enough to win.
Last year, we had neither (1) nor (2) because of BYU's tortious interference with Rob's contract and Bodo Bodo's injury. The year before we didn't have (2) because of Josh O injury, which put a ceiling on us of about a top 30 team.
This team should have (1) and (2) again if healthy, which gives you at least a chance to compete.
I consider (1) and (2) together to be about the same importance as having a good QB in football. It doesn't guarantee anything to have one, but you basically can't compete without one.
(1) on offense, someone that is an elite dribbler and can penetrate and create higher percentage shots for himself and others---layups, dunks, open jump shots. There are exponentially more of these short quick guys in the world than 6 foot 10 plus guys, so there is no excuse not to have at least one unless you are tortiously interfered with by another school.
(2) on defense, a rim protector that prevents teams from getting dunks and layups --- the highest percentage shots. Nowadays every good team has at least one of these guys, and they are almost all pretty dang close to 7 feet or above now. 6 foot 10 seems to be the minimum. You have to scour the globe to find enough humans this tall, which is what college basketball does.
Without these if the other team has them, you are stuck hoping you have a great shooting night and the other team has a lousy shooting night, and sometimes that's not even enough to win.
Last year, we had neither (1) nor (2) because of BYU's tortious interference with Rob's contract and Bodo Bodo's injury. The year before we didn't have (2) because of Josh O injury, which put a ceiling on us of about a top 30 team.
This team should have (1) and (2) again if healthy, which gives you at least a chance to compete.
I consider (1) and (2) together to be about the same importance as having a good QB in football. It doesn't guarantee anything to have one, but you basically can't compete without one.