I am actually less concerned with roster turnover by itself. I just do not agree with the repeated statements that roster turnover was just created by Groce's recruits/players in a change of culture effort. Underwood's entire class left the program, his own recruits.
The concern is recruiting, especially failure to close and whiffing on Fall recruiting desperately scrambling for recruits in the Spring, having to take chances with lower ranked recruits to fill scholarships from Fall and having additional scholarships open. As I have said before, the chances that all of our lower ranked recruits will pan out is slim to none, so turnover is inevitable even this Spring (it is an inevitable cycle). Fall recruiting is the cornerstone of successful recruiting, unless you are a blue blood like UK.
As far as expectation on "new" players it is really easy to say now that "new" players (lower ranked) will be better than Mark Smith, Tejon Lucas, Finke, JCL, Colbert, and DJW, but in reality there is no basis to justify that "new" players like Kane, Higgs, or Giorgi will indeed be better. They could be worse. If you can turn the point in time, the same high expectations were true for Mark Smith, Tejon Lucas, Finke, JCL, Colbert, DJW and others... and if all of them were coming in the same class, you could easily make a case that these players (Smith, Lucas, etc.) would be better than Kane, Higgs, and Giorgi. Guess what, if Kane, Higgs, or Giorgi happen not to pan out, their names will be added to the "former" player list and future "new" players would for sure again be unlikely to perform any worse. Rinse, repeat.