Questions for @rolltidefan and @Gigem :
How do you realistically expect your teams to look this season?
The aTm game is on a Friday in early November and in Columbus so I'm not expecting more than a handful of Aggies but, am I wrong there?
What about Bama? That game is at 7pm on the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and it is conveniently located for a lot of Bama fans in the Florida panhandle.
It would be a reasonable drive for a lot of Bama fans but OTOH it is the day between Thanksgiving and the Iron Bowl so who knows.
I'm truly curious what the crowd mix will be for that game. There are a lot of retired Ohioans in Florida for whom that would be the easiest game of the year to attend.
i have no idea what to expect. there's 3 players returning with any experience that matters. only 1 was starter. sears (starter), pringle, and griffen. pringle is a super athletic big man, but last year was just short of putting it together to dominate. i'm hoping he makes same strides in offseason that prior big men have done under oats. griffen was a good sub off bench last year, not sure what his role will be this year though. sears was, imo, the most important player for bama last year in terms of judging success in individual games. miller was obviously the best player and most important in that regard, but if you wanted to see when we struggled, look at sears stats. sears had a bad game, we had a bad game. can't say the same about miller. at least not as consistently. problem with sears is he was really streaky. good thing was he usually fell into that streak at some point during most games. he'd go 10 minutes into second half before getting a point, then before you know it have 12-15. has the talent to take over games, but also lacked maturity to get dirty points when things weren't clicking.
we have a decent amount of new talent coming in, both in transfers and frosh. transfers seem to be big fish in small pond type players that were very strong in smaller schools/conferences. we'll see if that levels up to sec/div1a.
this team is a damn near 100% rebuild, but oats has earned my trust that he can do just that. i don't expect last years level of talent and results, but i do expect to compete in every game and get into tourney comfortably. maybe compete for sec title/tourney. right now i'd guess we're borderline top25, but that's mostly a blind guess based on oats history and recruit/transfer rankings.
as for osu game, looks like it's in an arena with capacity of only 2500-ish. i suspect that will be filled. lot of locals will be bama fans that don't normally get to see them live. we'll see.
