Richmond played significant minutes on a senior-heavy team. With all of his other issues, I have a hard time blaming Weber for him not playing more. Griffin played a lot of minutes as a sophomore. I don’t know why he transferred, but I don’t think lack of playing time was the issue. And if it was, I don’t fault Underwood for not playing him more.
Henry is more of an example that proves my point about fit. We had players like him that for whatever reason did not pan out here. Maybe it was a bad fit with Weber’s and Groce’s personalities and/or systems. But in two years, I never saw him do anything in a game that made me think he needed more playing time. Perhaps he needed a longer leash and found one at DePaul.
But our bigger issue was all the 4 stars that didn’t contribute as much as we would have hoped given their rankings. Crandall Head, Mike Shaw, DJ Williams and Austin Colbert come to mind. We had so many 4 star busts that we were never able to surround Ray Rice, Malcolm Hill, Kendrick Numn and Leron Black with the talent to form a complete team.
Bad luck with injuries and discipline issues also played a huge role. Jamar Smith, Jereme Richmond, Leron Black, Darius Paul, Kendrick Nunn, Tracy Abrams, Mike Thorne, Brian Carlwell and probably others that I’m forgetting. None of those teams were going to be competing for Big Ten championships, but a few more may have made the NCAA Tourney if not for those various issues.