I will try to answer the best I can, and I know some will disagree, but if you want an honest reply, here you go: First, I will disagree on a couple of things. You said our top 3 are good, not great. I disagree. Our top 3 are great players who would likely each start on all 14 A-10 teams. I can agree that Nick and Grant are better offensively than defensively right now, but you will not find a better defensive player than Jacob in our league. I have yet to see his size be a liability, and his defense and steals often leads to easy offensive buckets for us. That is a huge weapon to have.
You said we were not close to good last year. Allow me to agree and disagree with that. OOC we were terrible, but we were 9-9 in the A-10 last year. Is that great? No, but if you want to know why I am one of the people who expects us to be above .500 in the A-10 and in the thick of a top 4 seed, it is because we nearly did that last year, and we return 3 of the best players in the A-10 this year. So, breaking the season down, I would say we were at least "close to good" in A-10 play.
Why am I optimistic and still supportive and why am I not frustrated and why do I not want a coaching change? Because I look at our past several years differently than some of the ones who look at it negatively. Thanks to such a bad OOC record, last year was an overall bad year, no doubt about it. But, I don't see 6 bad seasons before that like some do. I see 3 of the seasons as near misses as far as the tourney is concerned. I see a Ced Lindsay injury ruining a chance to dance one year, I see us being the 1st team left out of the dance with a nice NIT run another year, and I see a 13-5 A-10 record and another nice NIT run a 3rd year. Would it have been nice to dance one or two of those years? Sure, but I don't see those years as failures. Sorry, but I just don't. I look at the recent near misses and have an attitude of "keep knocking and you might get in". Also, I look at our past and do not conveniently ignore or forget about the back to back tourney seasons. No, they were not in the past few years, but they were not 20 years ago either. So, if we go back 9 years and not 7, I see 2 NCAA teams and 3 near misses, I see teams that went 13-3, 13-3, 13-5, and 12-6 in the A-10 which shows me we can compete just fine in this conference, and I see a program that continues to have some talent each and every year, which as a result, gives me hope each and every year.