While I understand where you’re going with that, I’m betting the coaching staff is hoping that the new talent will jell much quicker than that.
Like I mentioned in previous posts, we have a very solid core of veterans returning this year. We will need our youth to come in and be a support system for that. The growth and development of 3 newcomers will be essential for this team to maximize results this year. MA and Mila down low and Jones at the point.
It’s pretty obvious why we need MA and Mila down low as they will need to support Harper in the post. MA has things early on in her college career you simply can’t teach. She is one - smart, two- physically developed and three- fundamentally sound. Sure there will be a learning curve for her but I’m betting she will use all three attributes to her advantage as she gets accustomed to the college game. Mila has a year under her belt and has the tools and fundamentals needed to be successful. She gives us something we have not had under KG - a mobile post that can score at all three levels, I’m excited to see how the coaching staff uses her at the 4 spot in particular.
Jones gives this team something it desperately needed last year. A scorer at the point. We had to resort to Ellis last year at times and I believe that limited her potential impact at the wing spot as just being a pure scorer. There were times last year when teams barely needed to guard JT as she was simply not an option offensively for us. To have Spider come in and produce offensively at the point will force teams to guard us differently, and hopefully that will rectify our issues of going in scoring draughts. It will also allow for Terry to play off the ball more and potentially making her even more of a formidable rebounder she already is at the guard spot. (This will probably be the case when we play smaller, quicker teams.)
Those 3 jelling with the returning core are going to be the key for us to have success. When do they develop? Hard to tell. But I’m hopeful that KG has put together a tough enough OOC schedule that throws them into the fire immediately - will it always be pretty? - probably not - but the sooner these kids get into the fire the sooner the diamond is made. I’m hopeful that by B10 season these 3 will be developed enough to be key cogs in a rotation that I believe is talented enough to play with every team in the big ten and make the tournament once again.