Primarily it's not much of a change. I posted months ago that I thought the likely most successful path for us involving Manning was for him to get us to a talent baseline more in line with the history of Wake, and then for him to be replaced by Wellman's successor. I'll remain in complete disconnect with those who seem incapable of admitting that Manning inherited a mess, but had Collins and Dinos stayed could very well have been a flawed coach with a big name who got us 2 NCAA bids in 4 years post-[Redacted]. In that world Doral likely stays to join Hoard and everything is different, but that's the business.
Secondly, even with Woods exit I still thought we could be a bubble team. Add an Arians-like transfer and we might have a really fun season. I absolutely thought Moore and Craw were purely testing the waters and were coming back for a big senior year, so that was a shock. I don't care about the other transfers so much since their backup-level guys and they leave all the time for more minutes in lesser programs, but I think losing Moore will be just like losing Dinos last year. I see Sarr as another full season away from being a starter despite his ceiling, and the Okeke/Lorng combo is real bad.
So it's just the combination of bad news on the transfer rumor mill, and the fact that critical transfers became the difference between a passable season and a horrid one, not a good season and potentially a really good one. For a few days it was sounding positive from the boards, and from a few folks I know closer to Wake, that we were likely getting the guys we needed, but that optimism has quickly waned.
Craw/Chill/Brown/Hoard is still a solid core group of players, but you simply can't stick them with a couple of Terrence Thompsons and hope to finish .500 in the ACC. I feel bad that Crawford's senior year might play out like that, it sucks that the staff lost Doral to what is likely a pretty poor decision, and it's not going to do much to revive our fanbase when Wellman goes back to the [Redacted] plan to replace Manning.
But hey, it's basketball. You just need 5 guys who can play and for Hoard to be a legit star and suddenly everything's different. Tack on an 8 and 8 PF who can set a great screen and play defense and it's another 180. There's still at least some potential out there, but we just feel a hell of a lot closer today to the ultimate nightmare of Manning not making it long enough for Wellman to retire.
