Super sophomores?

One of the biggest questions this year would be how our sophomores develop. Not only are they key players this season, but they will lay the foundation for the next two seasons. We have seven sophomores on the roster so let's look at how they are doing so far.

Mike Davis - 29.6 mpg, 14.9 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.4 apg
Demetri McCamey - 32.6 mpg, 13.1 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 4.3 apg
Mike Tisdale - 22.1 mpg, 8.6 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 0.3 apg
Richard Semrau - 15.1 mpg, 2.7 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 0.4 apg
Jeff Jordan - 9.3 mpg, 1.1 ppg, 0.3 rpg, 0.3 apg
Bill Cole - 3.0 mpg, 0.6 ppg, 0.6 rpg, 0.3 apg
Alex Legion - not eligible

Our sophomore class combines for 56% of our minutes, 60% of our scoring (41/68 ppg), 65% of our rebounding (not counting team rebounds), and 40% of our assists. That is very solid.

5 of the 9 players in our rotation are sophomores. I think Legion takes all of Jordan's minutes, so I'm going to ignore both of them for now and focus on the four major contributors. McCamey, Davis, and Tisdale are starters and Semrau is a key backup.

The common thread with these four is that they all have talent but they also need to improve their overall game and their consistency. McCamey (23), Davis (28), and Tisdale (20) have already all had at least one 20-point game and Semrau has a high of 9. Nobody else on the team has broken the 20-point mark. All four have been shut down at times, with low scores of 8 for McCamey, 2 for Davis, and 0 for Tisdale and Semrau. McCamey gets very sloppy at times on both sides of the floor, Davis and Tisdale are both rail thin, and Semrau is still trying to gain confidence and needs to finish opportunities around the hoop.

Overall, I'd have to say that these four have performed better than expected (McCamey may be about what we expected) and have been the reason for the somewhat surprising 6-1 start. Davis is a budding star, Tisdale is a clutch finisher, and Semrau is our muscle in the post.

Add two more years and Alex Legion to this group and you have an NCAA Tournament team. Add two more classes of stud recruits (including the redshirting Simpson) and you have a special team. If the future looked bright a month ago, it is going supernova now.