More importantly, they have seen what they can be. They've already seen there capability when they played Arizona. This mental stuff is sometimes hard to understand and even harder to fix. Regardless, the Bruins right now are on the edge of their potential. They will either progress steadily (perhaps plateau at this level which wouldn't be too bad) or revert back to their roller coaster ride.
Would it be unreasonable to expect them to at least continue this level of play? I don't think so, but one never knows how these things will evolve. It takes a mature team with strong leadership to play consistently, and even more so for a team to play consistently on a high level. We'll see just what these Bruins are made of.
If Dent continues to play like he did against Purdue I don't think anyone, including himself, would be disappointed. It's Booker that needs to continue to grow. He played alright last night but there is plenty of room for improvement.
He seems not to understand positioning particularly on the defense, but really on both sides of the ball. On defense he often is out of position and he continually gets burned. He often gets in the way of his teammates. Once last night he completely blocked out his teammate who was defending a dribbler successfully taking him out of the play and allowing the dribbler to go all the way to the basket and lay it up. He often finds himself with his back to the play and one time a dribbler penetrated right up to him and the guy was laying it up before Booker even saw him. On rebounds he moves way too late and the rebound has already been grabbed while he is still pretty much just watching. He needs to learn to keep moving and going after the ball. He needs to get his legs and feet under him so he always has balance and can use whatever strength his legs have to their maximum ability. Not only is he often out of position he is often unbalanced which makes it very difficult to move with power either laterally or up.
On offense he has a hard time holding position and then when he does he doesn't seem to know how to get open and present the passer with an open passing lane. He easily gets pushed around and he's always appearing to be bouncing around seemingly with no purpose as opposed to moving solid in balance, with strength/power, and quickly, always aware where the ball is, where his teammates are, keeping good spacing, and moving with purpose. Too many times he appears to be just bouncing around out there and accomplishing nothing or very little.
If Booker can continue to improve, and I do believe he is improving, this team could be dangerous as long as Dent continues to be aggressive and effective, everyone else at least maintains their current effectiveness, and Clark returns. This could be a very tough team to beat. They've already proved that last night. Now we'll see if they can own and maintain that. It's not as easy as one may think. As tough as they had to be to compete last night it's even tougher to be able to do it every night.
As the queen once said to Alice - you have to run twice as fast if you want to get anywhere. The Bruins need to play tougher, stronger, smarter, and better if they want to continue to win because it's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder. Watch this space.