1) The conversation was about the 5 best freshmen in the B1G, not in the country. I think the chances of a player like Langford not making a list of the 5 best freshmen in our league are remote. He’s going to step right in and start at a position that doesn’t have much competition. He’ll get lots of minutes and touches. It doesn’t take excessive optimism or wishful thinking to foresee that.
If that opportunity wasn’t there for him at Indiana for what will likely be his sole year in college, he’d have gone elsewhere.
2) If our frontcourt was limited to Morgan and a couple of question marks, I’d agree with you. But, assuming Davis gets back to 100%, he’s going to be a consistent threat down low. He was getting about 10ppg and 4rpg (in just 18 minutes/game) before getting hurt last season. And Smith showed a lot of athleticism and promise as a freshman. I think the combo of Morgan, Davis, and Smith will require defenses to focus on them. I doubt Juwan will draw a ton of double teams, necessarily. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that defenses won’t be able to extend and spread against us the way they have the past few years, because we’ll have 3 legitimate threats in the paint, on the glass, and on the baseline.
I’m saying this less to tout our frontcourt as among the league’s elite (I don’t think it is) than to say that Langford won’t draw nearly as much defensive attention as he did throughout HS.
It should be interesting to see how RL fares in this kind of environment. He’s rarely seen games where he wasn’t the sole, or at least primary, focus of opposing defenses.