ESPN Pre-Season Top 25 has Villanova, Creighton and
by Irishdog80 (2020-03-23 22:16:29)
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Gonzaga as the Top 3 for 2020-2021. What do they all have in common? Catholic universities that have had recent success in college basketball. Back in the day, Digger had the Irish in the conversation for essentially a 10 year run. The Big East changed the dynamic with Georgetown, Villanova and St. Johns among others rising to the occasion in the mid '80s and the Irish have not really been the same since. Yes, there have been glimmers of hope with the recent Elite 8 runs and other successful Irish teams but the question is how do you truly break through? The one and done is part of the problem yet Dayton, Villanova, Marquette, Gonzaga, and others have broken the code and made runs with 4 year players.

National Championships are clearly rare and tough to get...ask uber-loaded Kentucky, Duke and Kansas teams from the past 5-10 years that stumbled somewhere along the line. The Irish need to regain the swagger most successful Irish teams have had and it starts with recruiting a few more stone cold competitors that either light it up whenever the team needs it or shut people down at crunch time and demand it from their teammates. Easier said than done and Brey needs to either figure out how to light those fires or find assistant coaches capable of identifying and landing guys with fire. That said, I do see some promise in Laszewski, Hubb, Goodwin and Carmody but it ebbs and flows too much. The optimist in me thinks they could completely turn the corner in 2020-21.

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