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Message: [QUOTE="Niastri, post: 5425467, member: 722"] It’s definitely hard to defend last years performance. Things started going wrong well before the season started, and never stopped. Failure to prioritize NIL, which led to a lousy portal haul. It was so bad that a kid we were asking to come start here went to Georgia to be a backup. The money delta was just too great for relationships and a starting role. Even if we did get Leffew, we still managed to come out of the portal with no decent point guard. Then the health problems. McLeod and Westry either couldn’t play, or were very limited from the start of the season, and never got better. Then Chris Bell inexplicably became unplayable for half the season, but we had nobody else so he still had to play. By the time he shot his way back to a respectable three point%, the season was toast. Then both of our best players got injured, Starling for long enough to impact the season, and Freeman long enough to crush it. Everything went wrong that could, and that isn’t even getting into a critique of Red’s coaching. The best coach in the world would have struggled with last season’s shhhhh show, and Red isn’t that. Looking forward, though. Next season’s roster is way better, even if everybody from last season was healthy and productive. Even our speculative pickups are comparable, and lower in priority. Would you take a maybe healthy Westry over a similarly ranked recruit like Betsey? Maybe, but Betsey is coming here to be a rotation or depth piece, last season we were desperately hoping Westry could miraculously get healthy and start because we had no point guard. Last season was a disaster. No doubt. Next year is going to be much better, even with a greatly improved ACC. I went line by line, position by position a few weeks ago, before we got Betsey, comparing the roster from last season with next year’s roster. Other than a healthy Lampkin/McLeod duo compared to Kyle/Souare, every position on next year’s squad is a substantial upgrade over last seasons. Before we picked up Betsey, a former top 50 kid with a year of Big East experience! And center is at worst a wash, and mostly because I’m an unrepentant Highlander Stan. [/QUOTE]

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