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CoBL College Preview: Bold predictions for the 2015-16 season

11/05/2015, 11:15am EST
By CoBL Staff

Can Josh Brown and Temple knock off top-ranked North Carolina next week? One of our writers thinks so. (Photo: Tug Haines/CoBL)

CoBL Staff (@hooplove215)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of CoBL's 2015-16 College Season Preview, which will run from October 2-November 13, the first day of games. For the complete rundown, click here)
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We told our staff writers to go crazy with a bold prediction for the above season, and crazy they went.

Here are some plausible (in varying degrees) things that could happen in the 2015-16 season:

Jalen Brunson wins Big East Player of the Year
It’s been a long time since the Big 5 has seen a recruit as big as Jalen Brunson commit to a city school. Villanova will have the pleasure of welcoming Brunson to an already loaded backcourt, which features reigning Co-PoTY Ryan Arcidiacono and Big East tournament MVP Josh Hart.  However, that should do little to cut into Brunson’s playing time. Fresh off winning a FIBA U-19 championship and being crowned MVP, the Nova freshman will look to attack a loaded Big East conference with the same tenacity that propelled him to a Gold medal. No freshman has ever won the Big East’s Player of the Year in the 36 seasons that the award has been given out. Despite all eyes being on Providence’s Kris Dunn, that changes this season. Brunson is just the piece that the Wildcats were missing and should propel them to another conference title and beyond. - Justin Allen

Lehigh will win a game in the NCAA Tournament.
The Mountain Hawks have a talented team. They have the Patriot League’s best player in Tim Kempton, a quick point guard with great vision in Kahron Ross and a strong supporting cast. This is the kind of recipe that can help a team knock off a 2 or 3 seed in the middle of March. The last time Lehigh was in the tournament was the 2011-12 season, and the team beat Duke behind the efforts of C.J. McCollum. No members of this team were a part of that win, but coach Brett Reed knows what it takes. The Mountain Hawks will also be testing themselves out of conference with Power 5 matchups against Syracuse, Virginia and Purdue as well as meetings with Yale and Stony Brook. They’ll be tested, and as long as they can get through the Patriot League, they’ll be able to give someone a game in the Big Dance. - Stephen Pianovich

Saint Joseph’s will finish in the top three in the Atlantic 10
If there’s any team in the A-10 primed to make a big leap in the standings, it’s the Hawks of SJU. Start with the best overall player in the league, future pro DeAndre Bembry, a 6-6 wing who led St. Joe’s in scoring, rebounding, assists, blocks and minutes last year. What makes this team so different, though, is that Bembry finally has adequate offensive support. Senior forward Isaiah Miles (10.7 ppg, 5.1 rpg) was the team’s best outside shooter a year ago (35.3 percent), and back after a medical year of absence is Papa Ndao, another 6-8 senior forward who shot 40.5 percent from 3-point range in 2013-14. They’ll need a spark from a trio of freshmen, local guards Lamarr Kimble (Neumann-Goretti) and Chris Clover (St. Joseph’s Prep) and forward Pierfrancesco Oliva (Bergen Catholic), to get amongst that top grouping, but the talent is there on Hawk Hill.  - Josh Verlin

Temple downs No. 1 North Carolina
Temple has battled several highly ranked teams over the past few years, both getting run out of the gym against some, and shocking others with a win. We’ll see how they do this year in the first game of the season at the Veterans Classic, where they’ll face down preseason favorite University of North Carolina. Certainly the Tar Heels are a daunting opponent, but this is a team that has been consistently inconsistent in their recent early season non-conference match-ups, and now they’ve lost their top player and scorer, Marcus Paige, for 3-4 weeks. Physically, Temple actually matches up pretty well against North Carolina, with size up front and speed in the backcourt. This game could come down to the Temple freshmen, a promising group of young players eager to test themselves against high-level competition. Last year saw the Owls swooped past a 10th-ranked Kansas team by 25 points, but lost to Duke and Villanova by 20 and 23 points respectively. But this year? We’ll know in less than two weeks. - Mark Jordan

Penn will finish in the top half of the Ivy League
There is just a certain feel around the Penn basketball program under first year coach Steve Donahue. With a more experienced team, talented freshmen and an offense that will flow through its big men, the Quakers are primed to improve from their 4-10 Ivy League record a year ago. That’s despite the recent decision by senior guard and team captain Tony Hicks to step away from the team after leading the program in scoring each of the last two years. The top three in the Ivy should be tough: Columbia, Princeton and Yale are all very experienced and talented. But after that, there’s no team that doesn’t have a lot to replace, and with a coach that knows how to win in the Ivy League, these Quakers will ride senior big man Darien Nelson-Henry, freshman guard Jake Silpe and a versatile sophomore class to a .500 record in league play and set themselves up for an Ivy championship in the next year or two. - Aron Minkoff

Villanova will not win the Big East
Since the conference realignment that reduced the 16-team power conference that was the Big East down to ten teams--only seven of which came from the Big East itself--Villanova has had a relatively easy ride to back-to-back conference titles. Sure, the Wildcats have had some very talented squads, but the teams in their conference that used to compete for Big East titles haven’t exactly been themselves since the split. Take Marquette, who reached the Elite Eight in the final year of the “old” Big East, or Georgetown, who had been a perennial conference title contender since the league’s formation. In the two years of the Big East as we currently know it, Marquette has earned a combined conference record of 13-23, and the Hoyas have yet to finish a season ranked in the Top 25--although they did knock off ‘Nova in dominant fashion last January. Now, with teams like Georgetown bringing back talented upperclassmen like D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, Providence returning one of the conference’s top players in Kris Dunn, and recent newcomer Butler being ranked twenty-fourth in the AP preseason poll, there’s definitely a reason to believe this could be the year we see some shake-up atop the Big East standings. - Jeff Griffith

Penn State doesn’t have to wait for highly touted class of 2016 to make some noise in the Big Ten
The Nittany Lions, who finished 18-16 overall last season, may be ahead of schedule when it comes to competing with the perennial powerhouses of the Big Ten. While they lost guard D.J. Newbill (20.7 ppg), the Nittany Lions have some talent on their roster including senior forward Brandon Taylor (9.1 ppg) and sophomore guard Shep Garner (9.2 ppg). While all the attention is being given to Penn State’s class of 2016 consisting of Roman Catholic stars Tony Carr, Lamar Stevens and Nazeer Bostick as well as Oak Hill Academy’s Joe Hampton, the 2015 class of Josh Reaves, Mike Watkins and Deividas Zemgulis will help pave the way for a bright future in Happy Valley. Reaves, ranked No. 74 in the ESPN 100 also out from Oak Hill Academy, should provide an immediate spark and give Penn State a viable third scoring option behind Garner and Taylor. Watkins, a 6-foot-8, 210-pound big man, hopes to compete for the other frontcourt spot alongside Taylor. Zemgulis gives the Nittany Lions a streaky shooting threat it has been lacking in recent years. The Nittany Lions do not have to wait till 2016-17 to be competitive in the Big Ten because this could be a season of success to build off of. - Rich Flanagan

 


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