Practices Begin, Preseason Rankings Trickling Out, and More
41 days from the 2023-24 season tipping off.
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With all that being said, let’s get to some of the news to this point as we are under 40 days away from tipping off the 2023-24 season.
First off, we have done 16 team previews for the coming season. Check out the podcast episodes with 16 head coaches that we have spoken to thus far.
That means that we have six more to go as we continue to bring you our season previews. Make sure you subscribe to the WAC Hoops Nation YouTube Channel so you don’t miss any of the podcast episodes.
Practice Makes Perfect
Official practices started in this final week of September. And the grind is just beginning for these student-athletes and coaching staffs. From now until perhaps the end of April, it is all gas.
Here is a little snippet from the first practice in Riverside for the CBU Lancers. Footage is courtesy of CBU Men’s Basketball Twitter account.
Two teams will feature new head coaches in Todd Phillips at Utah Valley and KT Turner at UT Arlington. A handful of teams will have quite the roster turnover especially in the case of defending regular season champion Utah Valley.
The defending WAC Tourney champs return key pieces in Ray Harrison, Gabe McGlothan and Jovan Blacksher Jr. Here is head coach Bryce Drew talking the media on the first day of practice.
And so it goes. The 2023-24 season is officially here.
Preseason Rankings
There have been some platforms come around with their preseason rankings. The Field of 68 Almanac came out last week with its WAC preview.
Eli Boetteger and company had Grand Canyon as the favorite to win it all in 2023-24. Right behind them was SFA and Seattle at two and three. Perhaps somewhat of a surprise to those who don’t follow the WAC is that UT Arlington was picked to finish fourth. We will have a team preview and podcast episode with new head coach KT Turner in October so you can see why.
Five was ACU. Six was Tarleton. Seven was defending regular season champion Utah Valley. Eight was California Baptist. Nine belongs to UTRGV who is going to have a ton of size. 10 is where Southern Utah lands and Utah Tech brings up the rear at 11.
Now, that is just one platform.
Mid-Major Central had GCU at the top, followed by SFA, Seattle U and ACU. UT Arlington is the pick to finish fifth while CBU, Tarleton, and Utah Valley round out the top-8. Utah Tech, UTRGV and Southern Utah round out the bottom three.
What seems very obvious, at least on the men’s side, is that most, if not all, platforms, believe GCU is the favorite to win the WAC.
We will have our preseason rankings out in October ahead of WAC Media Day.
SFA Schedule Reveal is Entertaining
Most schools are nearly finished with their full 2023-24 schedules. One team, in particular, came up with a pretty cool idea for a schedule release. Just watch the video from the SFA Men’s Basketball schedule release.
Who do you think had the best drawing? It might be Latrell Jossell with the ACU logo.
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Have a great weekend, everyone!