<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(melt @ 06-28-06 8:51 am) [post=5887]Quoted post[/post]</div><div class='quotemain'> Even with all the new people coming in, I can't see ISU finishing behind Colorado, Nebraska, or Kansas State. I'd be upset if ISU finished any worse than 8th in the conference, and I think we have the talent to finish 6th. [/b][/quote]
More likely we're finishing close to Mizzou, OU, and Colorado in the bottom third. Mizzou has absolutely no talent, OU lost 3 key players (Gray, Bookout, Everett) and had their recruiting class ditch after Sampson left, and Colorado has Roby and nothing else.
Nebraska is returning a solid core of players, has a solid recruiting class, and beat us one out of two last year. And that was with Stinson, Blalock and Taggert. And as much as we make fun of Maric actually thinking he can go pro, we still don't have a player who can play man-to-man against him. He'll eat up Marsden or Hubalek, and i don't think the Johnson twins will be much help either.
Same with Kansas State, who is returning (assuming Cartier Martin weasels his way out of the indefinite suspension) their top two in Cartier and Hoskins. This team wasn't a great shooting team, but they had one of the best defenses in the Big 12, and with Huggins, will probably be better prepared offensively this year than any year under the Wooldridge regime. We split with them when we had veteran leaders, I see us having a hard time against this team next year (unless Martin doesn't return).
I think the Cyclones have great two-years-from-now potential, but with our youth and relative adjustment period, i think we will have a tough time to get out of the bottom third next year. I see us finishing tied with OU, ahead of Missouri and Colorado in the bottom third. Hope i'm wrong...