No on is disagreeing with this point you keep making. However, those guys aren't walking through the door this season. Adjustments need to be made now to deal with the current situation.
My biggest issue with Manning is that he looks really stubborn. He thinks his best team will include a 4 guard line up. He sticks with that through some terrible early season losses despite all evidence that its not working. His finally forced (through foul trouble) to do something else and that shows signs of working. He is ignoring Doral (by not sitting kids that waive him off - they will get the messege quickly and be back in). The team we thought we would have pre season is the team we saw go toe to toe with UNC yesterday. That was a winnable road game (like every other loss this season) that was blown, in part, by poor coaching choices.
This is not to say manning can't be a good coach. But he is making a lot of mistakes now while he learns, on the job, to be a head coach in the ACC.
First of all, let's talk about Doral. If he sits Wilbekin, Chill and Woods for not passing to Doral, who is going to play? Danny should get on the guards about this, but, like many aspects on this team, there's a lot of gray area.
As to the "kind of team we thought we'd have preseason". We lost almost 37 ppg in shooting. We lost our two best big guys and a useful, tough wing. Coming in we had two potential stars and some projects. One of the stars was always going to take time to acclimate to the American game (and has shown strong, consistent improvement). Realistically, this was not going to be a 20 win team without every player improving dramatically and that is totally unrealistic. To get to 18 would have taken a lot of things falling into place.
We were grossly undermanned yesterday, yet it came down to missing some FTs. How isn't that good coaching? I realize that most of the board are unrealistic, but Danny coached a hell of a game yesterday.
I'm not saying Danny is a great coach, but he's not anywhere near as bad as most here keep posting that he is. Of all of Skip's quotes, the one that fits the most is, "It's not about the Xs and Os. It's about the Jimmies and the Joes."
Next year will show a lot. For the first time, Danny will have a fully talented and potentially full-sized squad. We will be replacing Wilbken's minutes with a 5* player. We will have at least one 4* player coming off the bench. Sarr will gain some weight and experience. For the first time, we won't playing lots/a majority of minutes with three guys 6'3 or under playing together.