It seems like all of us are predicting this season's outcome by looking only or nearly so, on last year's team. We should be giving more weight to Fox's first team, 2019-2020, a team which had 14 wins, and 7 wins in conference. If you look at that roster, it sure appears to me that this year we have a better roster. We are more talented, better, deeper, and more experience. Several players on that team now have 2 years of experience. What that team had that this one does not have is basically a sophomore Matt Bradley, a senior point guard in Austin, and Kareem South. Brown is not yet as good a point guard as Austin was, either penetrating, scoring, or dishing, but he is much better on defense. I think Foreman is easily as good as South, and you also have Shepherd and Roberson, and then there is Hyder. So I think we are deeper and stronger at the guards. On that team of 2020, Bradley played a wing, because we had no one else, save an unskilled and raw Kuany. Celestine has turned out to be a very good player, and he will likely start at SF or SG. Now Kuany has two years experience, so he is better now. Bowser is a very athletic wing, and could challenge for playing time at SF. And the other wings Anyanwu and Alajiki are described as skilled high school players, they and Kuany can probably play SF or PF. Alajiki's mixtape looks to me like he could even play guard in a pinch. The bigs will be as they were the last two seasons, Kelly and Anticevich the most talented, with Lars and Thorpe backing them up, but all of them have had two years of playing experience, and now they have had a full off season of training and conditioning. I've seen the mixtapes of the incoming players, and the skill level is higher than I expected. Last year, when Bradley or Anticevich got injured, Cal had a very hard time competing. When they both went down, Cal was sunk. This year, with this depth, I don't see that happening.
Perhaps the Conference has gotten stronger overall since 2019-2020, but honestly the roster looks so much more talented and athletic overall, that I can see no reason, other than a whole lot of key injuries, why Cal can't be as good as Fox's 2019-2020 team. Without looking at the strength of the schedule, I'd say Cal wins or exceeds 14 games overall, and has 7 wins in Conference.
SFCityBear