I'm in the camp for giving Manning next year, but even I can't get behind any type of "this was what we should have expected" argument with this team. If your goal was just to win games - not develop players, not fulfill promises to transfers or seniors, not stubbornly throw wild lineups out there game after game, etc. - there's no way we'd have only one player averaging 30 minutes.
Thompson was an unmitigated disaster, yet he's 3 minutes per game under Chaundee's average. Sarr and Mitchell may stink it up right now, but they're at least as good as him and they have a future. The only rational sense I can make of Thompson's stranglehold on the starting position is that to get him to come here it was promised to him. In multiple games Sarr's hit the table under the 2 minute mark. Who starts 29 games but gets subbed that quickly? And if Woods leaves the program for another school when we have Hoard and Mucius coming in, you have to believe it's because he watched Wilbekin start over him all year despite the fact that he's twice the basketball player Wilbekin is. Did Crawford and Woods struggle a little to figure out roles in the 5 games they started together? Sure. And if you absolutely half to play Wilbekin 25 minutes a game does it make sense to make him a 6th man? Yes.
But I'd be very, very dubious of any claim that if we'd played Crawford/Woods/Brown/Moore basically as many minutes as is reasonable - with the core 3 at 30+ minutes a game like the vast majority of other ACC teams - we'd have a more cohesive unit that would have won more games. Sure, you still have to bite the bullet and probably start Sarr all year in a very reduced role, but when those two guy's minutes combined didn't sniff Chilldress or Wilbekin minutes on the year... Well if we were going to suck then that wasn't a great use of minutes.
It's not that I don't get the plan (I think) - Manning's dream is a deep team of athletic wings/SF types and a dominant big sprinkled with 3 point shooters. And it's true that there have been a lot of really great teams (thinkin of UNC, Kansas, etc.) that made deep tourney runs thanks to depth and versatility. But if you're going to turn bad seasons into awful ones because you don't adjust to the personnel, there'd better be a nice payoff when you do get the type of team you want. We'll have talent and depth everywhere next year, even with Woods leaving. Craw/Chill is an elite point guard combo, Chaundee was a huge recruit and has all the tools, Moore is a dominant 5, Hoard is an NBA player, and you get to mix in Sarr, Mucius, Melo, Mitchell, etc. to add the versatility to the squad.
The story will either be 2 NCAA's in his first 5 years after taking over a complete dumpster fire, or another ACC coach on the hot seat with one brief run of great play by John Collins as the only bright spot.
