I agree that this staff has earned a little bit of a leash.. but it's also fair to at the very least be a little pessimistic on our pursuit of a top line scorer so far this off-season.
I think people are severely under valuing how fortunate we were to have TSJ and Domask last year. We knew what we had in TSJ and we got more then we planned for in Domask. But having two guys like that who can just go get a bucket on their own gets you through a lot of slumps and covers up some major flaws.
Last years team beats next year's team by 30 at this point. I'm not saying last years team is the bar because being a top 8(arguably top 3) is an unrealistic expectation year in and year out but we need to close the gap and I have faith the staff will
-TLDR: my main point is just the next 2 paragraphs: Humrizzle has a chance of approximating Domask's scoring production, but we'll see.
So, just in terms of production compared to last year, in my mind it's possible that TSJ is the only HUGE outlier in terms of what we need to replace. (gee who would think it'd be tough to replace an all-american?)
For Domask, the main question was would his game and production translate to the high-major level - and of course it sure did, although his scoring did actually slip a TINY bit from the year before. Still, absolute stud, obviously, but it seems that Humrizzle is in a similar situation. It's of course a big question mark as to how that will actually go, but I'd say the positives in his favor are: 1) he's bigger than Domask, which would seem to count for something, and 2) his game more heavily revolves around shooting, which should in theory translate well even moving up in competition. The big question mark though is that he only has 1 year of even division 1 experience, whereas Domask was a 4-year starter. So, can Humrangus keep his scoring at around 14-15 points a game? We'll see, but if he can, then at least he would mostly replace Domask's 15-16 pts per game production.
---- other notes:
In comparing the rest of the lineup, the next big question mark seems to be: can Ivisic score maybe 10-12 points per game and thus mostly replace Coleman's production? Again, we'll see, but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility. He has more of a post game than Coleman and is a good free throw shooter, so maybe he can put more fouls on guys and get some extra production that way.
For Guerrier, you have Boswell's production, and both are right around 10 points, so that seems to be a wash. It's also not unreasonable to think Boswell takes a jump, perhaps even significantly, so you could reasonably come out ahead there next year, and maybe that helps cover for Ivisic if he doesn't average 10pts or more.
Even for Ty (if he still ends up starting), it seems reasonable that you have at worst a wash, and possibly even a decent jump since Ivisic will mean Ty won't be guarded by 5s very much anymore.
And that leaves TSJ... Which, yeah. We'll see who else we add, and of course there is Tre White, who might be pretty good. We'll see. But I think the most likely scenario will have to be that the team doesn't have a guy that scores around 20 per game next year, but instead that missing production hopefully gets spread throughout multiple guys. I think it's possible that works just fine, but I get that it's a big question mark. But it's also just not going to be normal to always "know what you have" when it comes to expecting all-american level scoring every year from someone.
