Bird, data without context is useless. I'm not saying Danny has done a good job, but the situation he was handed was so bad that it was inevitably going to take time to fix with Bruce Pearl-like cheating. We had less talent than at any time in the past 45+ years I've been watching Wake bball. What made matters worse was that we close to being filled up with scholarships. Regardless of what we wished to happen, realistically we were going to suck for those first two years. That's the just the way it was.
We grossly overachieved in Year 3 and underachieved in Year 4. In Year 3, not a single expert or ACC coach gave Wake a shot at the post season, much less making the NCAAT.
Many on this board think that defense can be taught and invoked regardless of who is on your roster. This is simply not true. It becomes more pronounced when you have multiple holes.
We don't what Danny's ceiling is yet. Having talent will give us a lot of answers.
You are still drawing different conclusions based on the same available data, just emphasizing different bits of information. Two other ACC programs (VT and BC) and maybe a third (UVA) have dug out from similar talent holes in shorter time than we have over the last 8 years. Context is definitely a must, but there are multiple scales at which one could consider the context. I don't think your suggestion that Manning deserves another year is unreasonable, I just happen to disagree with it. Likewise my disagreement isn't derived in hate, it is derived from a different contextualization of the available data.