I think most of next year's team is in and it looks like BC will have 7 new players at least. It is impossible to tell how most of these players will work out as they come from mostly less talented conferences. That being said, some teams last year made great leaps due to surprises in the portal players they were able to nab.
Earl's focus - or just the way way the cards fell or NIL money permitted - seemed to be guards that can score the ball except the Clemson Beadle. Denning, Brown and McFarlane all seem to be able to get the ball in the hoop. BC will need scoring as the top 4 scorers from last year left. Two of the new freshman guards also seem to be able to score. Earl also got one big who scores, Venning, but I see him as the biggest risk of having problems with ACC bigs... Tchanda excites me. he seems to have all the athleticism and moves to contribute in year one but no one knows when it comes to Freshman performance.
Hand, Kelly, Payne, Hastings and Strong are returning. The only two for whom I have any excitement is Strong and Payne. Both showed signs of potential in limited playing time. I hope Hand gets to make what in essence will be a sophmore leap. Hastings is a big question mark and I can only hope Mighty left because he saw the writing on the wall as Hasting improved during the year. Kelly also had rare moments of promise but these were largely canceled by more frequent awful moments.
In the NIL era you cannot really predict how teams will evolve from one year to the next as teams basically can field entirely new talent and unknown talent moving into a different talent environments. I think Earl has done a reasonably good job on getting kids with promise But it is impossible to predict how many wins this team will get as we do not know how his recruits will play in the ACC and we do not know how other teams have recruited and how those recruits will play.... I frankly find this "every year is an entirely new team" aspect of NIL less interesting as a fan but it means teams can become relevant immediately ...
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