Instead of trying to come up with predictions for next year, I thought I'd come up with a list of questions, as this is much easier :). These are the questions that are on my mind regarding the 2005-6 Bruins, and I believe how they are answered will have a huge impact on how the season goes.

First, how will we replace Dijon Thompson's scoring and rebounding? For scoring, we clearly will not have a single, dominating scorer who will completely fill Thompson's shoes. Jordan Farmar was our second leading scorer this past year, but it would be nice if he could concentrate on handling the ball and setting up others instead of being responsible for the bulk of the scoring as well. Arron Afflalo and Josh Shipp will need to be more proactive as scorers, and of course, it would be quite a luxury if one of our big men can emerge as a consistent scoring threat. I think Thompson's rebounding could be tougher to replace, as none of our big men have demonstrated that they can dominate the boards.

The need for contributions from our big men leads to the next question: will Michael Fey and/or Ryan Hollins improve significantly? This tandem of Lavin-era holdovers seems to tease us with flashes of solid play (and in Hollins' case, spectacular athleticism as well), yet neither one is able to be effective on a regular basis. I imagine both will make minor improvements over the off-season, but wouldn't it be great if one experienced MAJOR improvement even if the other made no improvement at all? perhaps i am just mesmerized by Hollins' athletic ability, but i think his chance for substantial improvement is higher. he missed a lot of offseason work last year due to his knee injury, so hopefully he can use this year's offseason to get stronger and increase his basketball skills.

Continuing with the big man theme, how much from this past season should we use to predict what Lorenzo Mata will be next year and beyond? Obviously the guy's skills are not polished, but I'm not ready to write the guy off. Quite the contrary, as I could easily see him emerging as our most effective post player. We don't need a great scorer in the middle, we simply need someone with presence, someone with an attitude. perhaps Mata can fill this role. I believe this is why Howland recruited him in the first place.

Presumably, one of our freshman (probably Alfred Aboya) will be starting at the 4 next year; will he be effective? I don't know how good our freshman frontcourt players are, but we will need at least one of them to make immediate contributions. Luckily, it will be a different situation for this freshman than it was for our freshmen of 2004-2005, especially Farmar. Farmar was required to be the only point guard and the second scoring option - these are huge responsibilities to put on a freshman. Aboya and the others will most likely have to play only complimentary roles - that is unless Fey and Hollins disappoint so much that Aboya and Ryan Wright get bumped ahead of them at the 5, which would mean that we'd have only freshmen as our top post players - that would be a lot to ask.

Will increased depth translate to improved play? We will have five new talented players, but we can't play them all at once. These days, teams only need a 7 or 8 man rotation. True, but our lack of depth really hurt us last year, and not just because of the fatigue associated with heavy minutes played. First, our key players could not be too aggressive defensively to avoid foul trouble. Plus, our starters had nobody pushing them for playing time, and perhaps even more importantly, there was no full second team to scrimmage against. I mean, who did the first team go against in practice this past year? Did they clone Brian Morrison since he was the first point guard, shooting guard, and small forward off the bench? How much benefit did Dijon Thompson get from going up against Matt McKinney between games? Not much, I'm thinking.

How will cedric bozeman fit in, both on and off the court? has he improved to the point that he'll be on the floor a considerable amount of time? will he be healthy enough to contribute? it certainly seems that farmar will be the leader of this team next year - will the 5th year senior, former starting PG bozeman be able to deal with this? I think there will be somewhat of a weird dynamic, but if bozeman can be mature about it, it won't be a problem.

Will Howland make another completely unexpected lineup change to deal with our lack of big men? this past year, i never once considered Thompson at the 4 as a viable option until Howland made the move. with incoming recruit Mike Roll being highly touted as a wing player, could we see a lineup like farmar, afflalo, roll/bozeman, shipp, and fey/hollins? shipp at the four does seem like a stretch, but he has shown that he can score around the basket and he will be our top returning rebounder. Another option would be incoming freshman Luc Richard Mbaha Moute at the 4 - he's 6'7" and considered more of a wing, but if he shows he deserves to be on the court, Howland will find a place for him as he did for Shipp.

Is McKinney a lost cause at this point? If he was a perimeter player, I wouldn't even be mentioning him, but as you can tell, I'm very concerned about our inside play, so I want to examine all possibilities. Can he provide something if nobody else can? Remember, he was plagued by a couple physical ailments last year, perhaps he will show considerable improvement by next year.

Finally, will Howland be able to make us a more physical, better defensive team? Our defense impreved last year, but right now, nobody dreads playing against us like they do some other teams. nobody comes into a game against us concerned about being able to run their offense or getting good looks at the basket. I hope this changes. Successful teams defend on a regular basis. i would like to see us constantly play 40 minutes of lock-down defense, and i imagine Howland wants the same thing. and i don't mean keep the score down by walking the ball up the floor and running 30 seconds off the shot clock every possession. i mean simply making life miserable for the other team when they have the ball - physically not letting them go where they want, getting in the passing lanes, making the opposing point guard pick up his dribble 30 feet from the basket, etc. howland got us to rebound this past year, but i'm hoping our defense improves significantly next year. again, added depth will help in this respect.

so what should we expect for next year? in my eyes, a best case scenario is that one or more of the Lavin-era holdovers makes a Dijon Thompson-like improvement, our incoming class is as valuable as this year's freshmen group, and this year's freshmen improve considerably in their sophomore years, not only individually, but in their ability to play together. A worst case scenario is that we see only Brian Morrison-like improvement from Bozeman and our big men, we can't completely replace Thompson's contributions, and our incoming freshmen play like, well, average freshmen. it doesn't take a genius to figure that we will likely end up somewhere between the two extremes - that's why they're called extremes :) - but after what we accomplished this year, i'm hopeful that the bruins can be much closer to the best case than the worst case.

what about actual results? I don't like making these types of predictions, because they are dependent on factors outside of our control and often do not reflect how good or bad the team actually plays. But hey, it's the off-season, so what else am I supposed to think about - how about top 3 in the conference, losing no more than one conference home game, sweeping USC again, beating Stanford (at least once!), and winning a friggin Pac-10 tourney game? if we do these things, i'd expect maybe a 4 or 5 seed in the tourney, meaning we'd be expected to win the first round and then be a coin flip to go to the sweet 16. of course, many of these things will depend on which players go pro early and how strong the conference is, and by the looks of things, the conference should be stacked almost across the board. if diogu returns, Arizona reloads, Stanford avoids the injuries experienced this year, and cal and oregon make the types of improvements people are expecting, the conference schedule is going to be ridiculously tough. If Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, and Hassan Adams all return, it will be very difficult to finish in the top 3 of the conference. I'd love to think we're in the top 15 teams as some national writers seem to think, but we just have too many questions about our big men. Hopefully though, the team will exceed my expectations.

Go Bruins!