By Colin Rajala
Trove: Switching gears a little bit, there is at least one scholarship player left to fill out the 2024-2025 roster, but I wanted to get your opinion on the 24-25 basketball team as it currently stands. What are your expectations for the team?
Carino: It's just become harder than ever to project what teams are going to be because so many players are new on so many rosters. Not only do I not really know what to expect from Seton Hall, but I don’t know what to expect for most of the teams. It's a crapshoot. Every year I make predictions on Rutgers and Seton Hall in November and that’s after I’ve seen the team practice and after a whole preseason of writing about them.
This past year, I was the most wrong I've ever been because it's just so hard now with all of the musical chairs. I have an AP Top 25 vote and that preseason ballot is just throwing darts against the dart board now. You look back on it now and look how it shook out and it's embarrassing, but there's no real way to do it.
KenPom should not have preseason rankings. What are they even based on? KenPom should come out on December 1 or December 15 after a month or so of games where there's a lot of data, then start rolling from there. Even the AP Top 25, which has been around since the 1940s and serves as a valuable frame of historic reference, it’s hard to take these preseason polls seriously. That's in October and November, forget about the people coming out with stuff in May and June when these rosters aren’t even finalized yet. So, I don't really have a good answer for you there.
