by Wufan » October 9th, 2011, 9:13 am
I think (and most Bulldogs will agree) that without Van Deest, Drake will likely finish lower in the standings than with him. With Van Deest and Rice Drake had a nice 1-2 punch, but without, I just haven't seen enough out of all of those supposedly high calibre power forwards...Ulenhopp (sp?), Simons, et al. Add to it that I don't like the PG situation in Des Moines and it's hard to like Drake in the pre-season (not that they aren't capable).
With the return of Brown and progression of Simms-Edwards, Prosser, and Lemon, BU looks about even with Drake minus SVD. Evansville MSU, and UNI look slightly better to me, but I could see where if SVD was there Drake would easily be lumped into that group. I don't see DU competing with ISUb, CU, or WSU over the course of an 18 game conference season even with SVD, but a 4th place prediction wouldn't have been out of the question.