I’m blind drawing for the order in which to do these, and the Monarchs came out of the hat first. Coincidentally (or not), that’s where they will also show up in this year’s Blue Ribbon. Funny how that happened.

Anyway, here’s what you need to know:

Blue Ribbon Lead: Old Dominion head coach Blaine Taylor is boring. He coaches the same way, year after year; game after game: Confound your opponent by mixing stifling man defense with about 3,000 versions of zone, pound the glass, protect the basketball and score just enough to win a pile of basketball games.

The Message: Play better in February than you played in November.

Last year toed the party line for the Monarchs. After surviving a 2-4 January skein in which they looked ragged, the Monarchs rallied to win 14 of its final 16 games, culminating in a Collegeinsider.com tournament championship and 25-win season.

ODU arrived as expected: the Monarchs led the CAA in assist-to-turnover ratio, rebound margin, and scoring defense (60.3ppg). Conversely, the Monarchs’ offense was prone to Sahara-sized scoring droughts and they shot just 64% as a team from the foul line.

Key for ODU: A fast start. The past three seasons ODU has stumbled out of the gate. Last season they were 4-5 before finishing 12-6; two years ago they were 5-5 but ended 11-7. And three years ago, ODUs 5-3 start seems reasonable until you see they ended the season winning 10 straight to go 15-3.

The Monarchs open this year at home with Delaware in December, then travel to Mason, travel to Towson, host JMU, host Hofstra, and travel to UNCW. That’s huge opportunity.

(Note to new readers: we don’t abide by the “one game at a time” cliche here. We believe that as fans with no impact on the actual final score of games, we have the luxury of looking as far into the future as we prefer. So zip it up on that front.)

Guy You Think Is Important, And He Is: Darius James. This guy is about 200 times better as a point guard than you think. He looks slow and he can’t shoot consistently, but the guy was third in assist/turnover ratio and third in assists. Eric Maynor graduated and Brian Johnson blew out his knee, making James the top assist man returning (157) to the league. James is getting done, even if it doesn’t look pretty. So yes, he needs to get better, but not as much as you think.

Guy Who Is Actually More Important: Marsharee Neely. The difference in the good and great teams is the guy that can swish you out of a scoring drought. Nobody on the ODU team has that skill in more abundance than Neely. For the first time, Blaine Taylor has admitted that Neely needs to play defense if he is to see court time. The point: if you are going to be the guy that breaks team-wide scoring slumps, you can’t be sitting next to Jim Corrigan when the game clock is running.

Neely hit 6-10 threes and scored 30 points in the Monarchs’ final two CIT games. What I find far more interesting: Neely snared 13 combined rebounds in those two games.

Guy Who Could Play On My Team: Ben Finney. On a team full of talented specialists, you need the tough guy that is great at nothing but can do a little bit of everything. You know, a winner. The 6-5 junior is toughness personified—he led a big ODU team in rebounding and his 86 offensive rebounds were fourth in the league.

Guy I’m Not Sold On: Keyon Carter. This guy has so much talent and looks first team all CAA for stretches. But Carter has just as many moments where he zones out and doesn’t look like he’s comfortable with what’s going on. I’m convinced Carter is going to make me look brilliant and stupid, probably in the same week.

Coach Seems To Like Him: Trian Illiadis.

Game(s) I Will NOT Miss: Ending the season against VCU (2/27) is a master stroke of scheduling. Just brilliant. Plus, Christmas in DeeCee @Georgetown will be fun on 12/19.

Random Notes: We’ve made it to the end of the Old Dominion season preview and not mentioned Gerald Lee–you know, the guy likely to be named preseason player of the year. What does that tell you?

As far as goofy mid major basketball “traditions” go, singing Ice Cream and Cake at the under 4:00 media timeout during ODU home games is among the best.

More info at their basketball site.

Basketball State Raw Stats from last year.

Chatter at Monarch Nation.