1.) Discipline, discipline, discipline: Expect this team to be vastly more disciplined and more fundamentally sound than last year's team.
2.) Excellent Half-Court Defense: Expect this thing to finish in the top half of the league in most defensive categories. With Pearl's half-court defense, most teams could reverse the ball two or three times and get whatever shot they wanted. Also, there were just way too many uncontested layups on missed rotations. Expect that to improve by a long shot.
3.) Expect games in the 60s. : It's clear that Martin isn't going to be a fastbreak first team, as Coach Pearl was with great success. Expect many half-court slugfests this season.
4.) Expect Improvement out of Several Players: Bruce Pearl had trouble recruiting players that suited his system. However, he did recruit players that fit a motion offense. Trae Golden immediately comes to mind. He showed great natural instincts in the open floor last year but sucked, like everyone else, in the pathetic half-court sets we saw last year. Luckily, a motion offense is all about instincts, and that's a good thing for Trae.
5.) Finally, Expect to be Competitive: First, our league isn't that good from top to bottom, so we should be able to compete with most of the teams in the SEC. Also, Martin's style is conducive to staying in games that you might not have any business staying in. Don't be surprised if one of these non-conference games that many have chalked down as a blow-out loss turns into a barn-burner.
