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[QUOTE="Brooky03, post: 2459724"]
McCullough was kind of trash against decent competition and got hurt.  Malachi wasn't any better than average until he went off on Virginia in the tournament.  It would be revisionist to say anybody expected either to leave based on the first month or two of their seasons.  I'll grant you that McCullough was recruited with the expectation that he'd be OAD, but his play was not indicative of a OAD (he was 6'10" and routinely missed layups).  Both guys had NBA measurables but lacked the on-court production you'd expect from a OAD.  The possibility that they'd leave was always there, but I would not say either was in the 'more likely gone than not' camp even by midseason.  And any information about their likelihood to depart that was learned after midseason was just too late in the ballgame to do anything about.

Ennis and Lydon were in the 'more likely gone than not' category before midseason, but neither was a sure thing.  Lydon had a disappointing sophomore year, relative to the production expected based on his freshman year, and Ennis lacked the size and/or athleticism of a typical starting NBA PG.  Regardless, we had backup plans in place.  Joseph was a high level recruit brought in to replace Ennis and Gbinije was more than capable of taking some backup PG duties.  It just so happened that Kaleb didn't pan out and Gbinije had to take over the starting role.  He did a pretty good job of that, I might add.  Diagne was supposed to be in the same class as Lydon but the NCAA shot that horse in the face.  The staff recovered nicely, imo, between TT, Moyer, and Brissett.  Nobody would have expected a transfer from TT, who was all but guaranteed 35+ minutes and 15+ ppg.
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