Right, the previous season can never be relevant for a team. Sure, Dayton had a nice run last year to the Elite 8, but they lost their top two scorers and rebounders last year (more than 45% of both stat), so they have to be really bad this year, and the T25 ratings and rankings can't be at all real. None of that can be relevant because they lost too much talent. Same with a bunch of other teams, and team history has nothing to do with anything.
Okay, here's the thing about basketball. Teams retool and rebuild. Most teams do lose some key talent each year, and UConn would love to have KML and Kia back, but it's a new year, and I think they can match last year's fine outcome. And despite the fact that Colgate is only 1-6, that's still better than the 0-7 (1-12, 2-16) start last year, and there are some statistical indicators that the offense could be better than last year. Clearly they need to take care of business both home and away against the bottom three Patriot teams, but there's no big reason that they can't knock off a Lehigh and Lafayette like they did last year and pull some other upsets.
Despite last year's total non-relevancy, I still feel that a coach who at least managed to get the team going in the right direction last year with the winning record in the last 13 games may have a shot at doing it again. It's possible that after watching some Colgate games that you know more than the coach, just as there seems to be many BY posters who know far more about the Huskies than Geno will ever know, but I'd give some respect to a coach who has watched her players develop and who feels they are her best squad ever. It's possible that they truly are, though I guess as you say it must be a snow job, which are big up there in north central NY.
Attendance figures are always bones of contention, and many BY posters have snorted about the reported TBA figures for the Vols or even the Huskies' own HCC figures. Hard to know exactly who to believe about any of these numbers, but I'll ask some friends upstate if they can go count every tush at Cotterell. Whether last year Colgate was reporting 353 when they were only getting 250, this year in the only other home game (yes, we are excluding the UConn game for you), they got a reported 527 for measly Monmouth, an indicator that attendance could be trending in the right direction because of the excitement generated about playing UConn this year. But I guess you're going to maybe say that 228 of the seats were occupied by ghosts. Whatever, I'm sure the TBA true absentee rate for the Vols must be higher than 40% nowadays too, but I have more confidence in the Raiders' trend line than the Vols'.
