St Louis and Richmond are the consensus top 2. By a pretty wide margin. The fact the league thought we were worth scheduling each of them twice is, to me, a good sign. I see several opportunities in conference for wins in the top 2 quads as i expect there will be upwards of 8 teams in the top 100.
Purely spit-balling here but:
Quad 1 opportunities- at St Louis, at Richmond, at Duquesne, at Davidson, home vs St Louis, home vs Richmond
Quad 2 opportunities: At Umass, home vs Dayton, at Rhode Island, home vs VCU
Some jumping around between 1 and 2 could happen, but having 10 of 18 games in conference be against the top 2 quads would be a luxury we haven't been afforded since the 2016 season. How we do with it is another question.
I tend to agree with BI85's assessment that we havent seen enough out of last year's team to think we'll be much more than maybe 12-6. 12-6 with that schedule would put us in the NIT conversation depending on how we did OOC. That said- IF all of the following things happen maybe we would be in 14-4 territory:
Osun develops more of an O presence and stays out of foul trouble; AJ and Winston both hone in the skills we saw 20% of the time at least 75% of the time, Lofton consistently scores aggressively in addition to his distribution, Welch continues to develop at the rate he did between his first year and last year, Adaway Creal, (or someone else) provides that energy/spark of tough defense we need, all of our guys toughen up and dont get rag dolled, someone/anyone turns into an explosive option.
Lot's of ifs. Too bad it wont happen.