To be clear kingaling I used third year in because you talked about there's reason to be positive here at the beginning of the third season. That's why I referenced third year instead of two seasons.
Here's why I have no optimism and this is what I've repeatedly tried to explain about this style and philosophy of basketball. I'm going to do two things here. 1) I'm going to reduce emotion and vitriol and attempt to make an honest and objective point here. 2) I'm going to admit I probably don't know as much about basketball as someone like kingaling. I've been a baseball guy all my life and know far more about football than I do hoops. But I've been around athletics most of my life and worked in both professional and collegiate circles. I've seen what it takes to have a championship culture and mindset and I've seen what the opposite looks like.
With CNM's philosophy, he has to significantly out recruit the opposition, because the focus on pace, offense, and outscoring opponents requires it. I've probably said this a dozen times now. The places this works is at blue chips where the best players go or low-major where a coach can literally out athlete the conference opponents. This is why CNM was able to have great success in the Big South but has never had any meaningful out of conference scalps.
As we look at this year, I don't see any four stars on the roster and that's literally what he's going to have to consistently recruit to win here, because Western, La Tech, UAB, Charlotte, etc., heck even the F_A schools are going to play hard nose defense. In other words, we're going to be going up against teams with equal offensive talent, but those teams are going to play a much more efficient style of defensive basketball because of the philosophy. Sure, once CNM gets all his type of guys in we may have one game where we bury a good conference foe by 30 (because everyone was on and we couldn't miss a shot) but then turn around a few days later and lose to a bottom half team because we jacked up threes from midcourt all night that didn't go in and the opponent got a bunch of easy points in transition. Just one example that comes to mind.
Even if we can admit we have better players that's not necessarily going to translate into wins. I mean - yeah - the first year was difficult but we watched guys who were here before suddenly not be able to dribble or catch the basketball and certainly no one played a lick of defense. Is our defensive efficiency going to improve just because we have a couple of better scorers on the team this year? Even in games last year where the team had a good game, CNM still ended up getting out coached and losing games that were well in grasp. These are the reasons why I have very little optimism.
I will say this; however. Although I suspect completing the season is probably going pretty low due to what's going to happen this late fall and winter with this freaking COVID crap - if he shows me better approach to the game and produces a plus .500 season this year I will give him a chance. And by that I'm not counting however many glorified D2 scrimmages they come up with. If he gets above .500 I will then be quiet for a while about it.