Coming into this season I thought that Coach Anderson had upgraded the talent level on the team but that he was going to have a fairly long to-do list.
The first few items were integrating the (many) new faces with the returning players, finding the right role for everyone in what is fundamentally a completely different team than last year, working on the adjustment for the JUCOs and the freshmen, and teaching the newcomers the system.
I think he's made fair progress on most of those items. The divide between new players/returning players seems much less obvious than it was at the beginning of the season. All of the roles haven't quite been nailed down, but they're getting there. Cole and Moore seem much more comfortable. Posh and Wusu are having growing pains, but as they say the best thing about freshmen is they become sophomores.
There are still a whole lot of development needs for this team. Somewhat surprisingly for a Mike Anderson team, the main one is defense.
As Logen pointed out on another thread, our guards do not stop the ball at all. McGriff might actually be the best of the lot at the moment. Alexander is playing like early-era Ponds on defense - all hat and no cattle, if he can't get the steal then he is out of position to do anything else useful on defense. Williams is a little better, but not much. Hopefully the return of Dunn will help stabilize that issue some.
With regard to guard defense, Anderson's system is a risk/reward approach - you're going to get turnovers and runouts, but sometimes you're going to get beat. Right now the players have not gotten good enough at the system for the reward to consistently outweigh the risk, but I have a fair amount of confidence that they'll get there. It's just a different approach from old school man defense, but if it's a net positive then that's what matters. And realistically they don't have the personnel to play old school man defense, which brings us to...
The post defense is truly horrible Truly. Horrible. I have commented about Moore's ineffectiveness as a "big man" from early on, and he has not gotten any better. He grabs his fair share of rebounds because of his length and athleticism, but he does not box out effectively, does not rotate to provide help, and is just a very weak post defender all around. Roberts is better, but Anderson has clearly made a decision that he'd rather have Moore's offense on the floor than Roberts defense (and I guess hope that Moore's defense comes along). The real disappointment is Toro, I had expected more from him but he has been flat awful. So you can see why the staff went out and got another big.
The offense is not exactly a work of art, but it's ahead of the defense and I don't think it amounts to a problem. There are enough shooters to take advantage of a zone and to keep the defense honest.
In terms of individual development it seems to me that Cole, Moore, and Earlington are finding their roles. Williams is starting to grow into the role of being one of the top options on offense. Champagnie is a pleasure to watch. As for Posh, I had posted previously that I wasn't ready to build a statute of him, and to me he has a long way to go in just about every aspect of the game. To some extent I think McGriff is a more complete player than Alexander - he has better court vision, stops the ball better, doesn't force his shots. Alexander has more upside, but he could learn a few things from McGriff's game.
The good news with all of it is that I have confidence that the staff sees the same holes and will plug them all. It's just going to be a work in progress for awhile is all.