Can this year’s team be better than last year’s? Shaka Smart fields the question

Jim Swing
Sports Editor
Commonwealth Times’ Sports Twitter

In the post-game press conference following VCU’s win over George Washington at the Verizon Center Sunday, Shaka Smart said that still, to this day, about half of the questions he fields from the media are about the Final Four.

Not a huge surprise considering the nature and extent of the accomplishment, but Smart is focused on his current team.

And now, after a rather impressive 5-3 start to the 2011-2012 season, Smart – with a brand new arsenal on his back – is taking a new question.

Can this year’s team be better than last year’s?

“We can better than last year’s team in February I’ll tell you that, Smart said referring to his team’s 3-5 slump during the month. It was the lowest point of the season for a VCU team that suffered three rare home losses to Old Dominion, George Mason and James Madison.

“Can we be better than last year’s team played against Kansas?” Smart said. “I don’t know, that was a special group that came together and was playing its best basketball all at the same time.

“But I wouldn’t put anything past this year’s team, we’ve got some guys that have made terrific growth and the exciting thing is there’s still a lot of potential there for growth.”

Smart is especially excited about his team’s defense this year, which has been stifling so far. VCU has forced its opponents into turnovers on 26 percent of their possessions, with a forced turnover approximately once every four possessions, good for seventh in the country. Through the first eight games of the season, the Rams turned their opponents over 138 times. Oddly enough, at this time last year they had forced 139 turnovers.

“If you go individual by individual we should, in time, be better defensively than we were last year,” Smart said. “We’re a little bit taller, a little bit longer, a little bit more athletic, but last year’s team had more experience, and with more experience comes defensive wisdom.

“I think as this group continues to gain experience, we do have the potential to be a better defensive team than last year.”

Only time will tell if this year’s team can be as good as last year’s. It’s a question even the coach himself couldn’t predict the answer to.

“It’s such a different year. The makeup of our team, the makeup of our league is so different, so it’s tough to compare, I know everyone wants to do that,” Smart said. “But I think our team could be very good this year.