One thing that stands out blatantly from that breakdown is that two of those three guys are our starting backcourt. And the only viable "replacement" for Oshae is Battle, who already is barely coming out of the game.
In terms of "what happened," I think there were numerous factors. The dominoes started toppling when we went all-in on Quade Green, eschewing other guard prospects like Isaiah Washington who would have bolstered depth. We weren't able to convince Ayala to reclassify. We took a guy like Howard Washington, who could have a nice future here but is a developmental prospect who probably isn't going to contribute much early. To compensate, we sought out and landed a combo guard 5th year transfer who [on paper] would have helped address the backcourt depth issue -- and enabled Battle to spell Brissett if need be.
But at SF, the coaches thought we were going to land a versatile wing in Brandon Randolph, but his recruiting visit didn't go well [putting it mildly]. We didn't recruit Lonnie Walker actively enough. And we lost out on Jordan Tucker at the 11th hour, who is now transferring from Duke after one semester.
Another factor is that Dolezaj, who by all accounts is a helluva player who is going to be a brilliant contributor throughout his career, doesn't offer much perimeter scoring at this stage of his developmental curve -- so he's seeing the majority of his time at the 4 and 5. And of course, if we'd done a more effective job recruiting wings like Randolph / Walker / Tucker, than our depth / shooting situation at the 2 / 3 would be different, and give us a lot more lineup flexibility.
Overall, it seems like a bit of bad luck, compounded by a few key misses on the recruiting trail. Things would probably look entirely different from a depth / minutes distribution standpoint if Tucker had opted for SU. Or if Randolph's recruiting visit hadn't taken a wrong turn. Or if Thorpe hadn't abruptly left the team.
