As a fan not remotely
There is a major difference, Smith and Richmond were experienced seniors with success at high levels in their resumes as lead guards; Scott was an experienced senior from a winning program. in addition Wilcher, Luis, Eijofor, and Dunlap to a lesser extent, returned.
Neither Sanon, Jackson nor even Sellers had anything close to that. Sellers had experience but not as a lead guard and he showed in the two games before last night what he is capable of when able to hunt shots, a couple of possible poor judgements in shot selection down the stretch against Iowa State notwithstanding.
Sanon and Jackson seem genuinely overrated IMO because neither of them do anything except for making shots and neither APPEAR to be consistent or truly dependable even there. Hopkins is hot and cold as you would expect a player who essentially hasn’t played in two years would be and Darling is being asked to take on a much bigger role than expected. Mitchell is a great glue player but on a team where the pieces are so far apart chemistry wise, glue doesn’t yet make the difference it could.
Could this team gel? Of course they could. Commenting on what is occurring in front of ones eyes is not writing off the season but so far it seems more reminiscent of year one, when the hole the team dug was too deep to climb out of, rather than last year when the team was obviously able to get it together.
Because, like it or not, there are very visible, fundamental flaws in this group, weak perimeter defense and as weak defensive rebounding, a glut of paint playing bigs, inconsistent outside shooting and mostly, IMO, no chemistry and not nearly enough players that understand the importance of and then are willing to get down and dirty.
